Out of the smoke and dust of the little room
With tea-talk loud and laughter of happy boys,
I passed into the dusk. Suddenly the noise
Ceased with a shock, left me alone in the gloom,
To wonder at the miracle hanging high
Tangled in twigs, the silver crescent clear.
Time passed from mind. Time died; and then we were
Once more at home together, you and I.
Little did I dream, England, that you bore me
Under the Cotswold hills beside the water meadows,
To do you dreadful service, here, beyond your borders
And your enfolding seas.
I was a dreamer ever, and bound to your dear service,
Meditating deep, I thought on your secret beauty,
As through a child's face one may see the clear spirit
Miraculously shining.
Not a sign of life we rouse
In any square close-shuttered house
That flanks the road we amble down
Toward far trenches through the town.
The dark, snow-slushy, empty street...
Tingle of frost in brow and feet...
Horse-breath goes dimly up like smoke.
No sound but the smacking stroke
Of a sergeant flings each arm
Out and across to keep him warm,
And the sudden splashing crack
Of ice-pools broken by our track.
Amazement fills my heart to-night,
Amaze and awful fears;
I am a ship that sees no light,
But blindly onward steers.
Flung toward heaven’ s toppling rage,
Sunk between steep and steep,
A lost and wondrous fight I wage
With the embattled deep.
I neither know nor care at length
Where drives the storm about;
Only I summon all my strength
And swear to ride it out.
Into the gloom of the deep, dark night,
With panting breath and a startled scream;
Swift as a bird in sudden flight
Darts this creature of steel and steam.
Awful dangers are lurking nigh,
Rocks and chasms are near the track,
But straight by the light of its great white eye
It speeds through the shadows, dense and black.
Colonel Cold strode up the Line
(tabs of rime and spurs of ice);
stiffened all that met his glare:
horses, men and lice.
Visited a forward post,
left them burning, ear to foot;
fingers stuck to biting steel,
toes to frozen boot.
Stalked on into No Man’ s Land,
turned the wire to fleecy wool,
iron stakes to sugar sticks
snapping at a pull.
Those who watched with hoary eyes
saw two figures gleaming there;
Hauptmann Kälte, colonel old,
gaunt in the grey air.
I
GLOOM!
An October like November;
August a hundred thousand hours,
And all September,
A hundred thousand, dragging sunlit days,
And half October like a thousand years...
And doom!
That then was Antwerp...
In the name of God,
How could they do it?
Those souls that usually dived
Into the dirty caverns of mines;
Who usually hived
In whitened hovels; under ragged poplars;
Who dragged muddy shovels, over the grassy mud,
Lumbering to work over the greasy sods...
Aulder than mammoth or than mastodon
Deep i’ the herts o’ a’ men lurk scaut-heid
Skrymmorie monsters few daur look upon.
Brides sometimes catch their wild een, scansin’ reid,
Beekin’ abune the herts they thocht to lo’ e
And horror-stricken ken that i’ themselves
A like beast stan’ s, and lookin’ love thro’ and thro’
All is lithogenesis — or lochia,
Carpolite fruit of the forbidden tree,
Stones blacker than any in the Caaba,
Cream-coloured caen-stone, chatoyant pieces,
Celadon and corbeau, bistre and beige,
Glaucous, hoar, enfouldered, cyathiform,
Making mere faculae of the sun and moon,
I study you glout and gloss, but have
No cadrans to adjust you with, and turn again
I saw a man this morning
Who did not wish to die
I ask, and cannot answer,
If otherwise wish I.
Fair broke the day this morning
Against the Dardanelles;
The breeze blew soft, the morn's cheeks
Were cold as cold sea-shells.
But other shells are waiting
Across the Aegean sea,
Shrapnel and high explosive,
Shells and hells for me.
