Part 38

Robert Nichols

THE SIGN

We are here in a wood of little beeches: And the leaves are like black lace Against a sky of nacre.

One bough of clear promise Across the moon.

It is in this wise that God speaketh unto me. He layeth hands of healing upon my flesh, Stilling it in an eternal peace, Until my soul reaches out myriad and infinite hands Toward him, And is eased of its hunger.

And I know that this passes: This implacable fury and torment of men, As a thing insensate and vain: And the stillness hath said unto me, Over the tumult of sounds and shaken flame, Out of the terrible beauty of wrath, I alone am eternal.

One bough of clear promise Across the moon.

Frederic Manning

THE TRENCHES

Endless lanes sunken in the clay, Bays, and traverses, fringed with wasted herbage, Seed-pods of blue scabious, and some lingering blooms; And the sky, seen as from a well, Brilliant with frosty stars. We stumble, cursing, on the slippery duck-boards. Goaded like the damned by some invisible wrath, A will stronger than weariness, stronger than animal fear, Implacable and monotonous.

Here a shaft, slanting, and below A dusty and flickering light from one feeble candle And prone figures sleeping uneasily, Murmuring, And men who cannot sleep, With faces impassive as masks, Bright, feverish eyes, and drawn lips, Sad, pitiless, terrible faces, Each an incarnate curse.

Here in a bay, a helmeted sentry Silent and motionless, watching while two sleep, And he sees before him With indifferent eyes the blasted and torn land Peopled with stiff prone forms, stupidly rigid, As tho' they had not been men.

Dead are the lips where love laughed or sang, The hands of youth eager to lay hold of life, Eyes that have laughed to eyes, And these were begotten, O Love, and lived lightly, and burnt With the lust of a man's first strength: ere they were rent. Almost at unawares, savagely; and strewn In bloody fragments, to be the carrion Of rats and crows.

And the sentry moves not, searching Night for menace with weary eyes.

Frederic Manning

SONNETS

I see across the chasm of flying years The pyre of Dido on the vacant shore; I see Medea's fury and hear the roar Of rushing flames, the new bride's burning tears; And ever as still another vision peers Thro' memory's mist to stir me more and more, I say that surely I have lived before And known this joy and trembled with these fears.

The passion that they show me burns so high; Their love, in me who have not looked on love, So fiercely flames; so wildly comes the cry Of stricken women the warrior's call above, That I would gladly lay me down and die To wake again where Helen and Hector move.

The falling rain is music overhead, The dark night, lit by no Intruding star, Fit covering yields to thoughts that roam afar And turn again familiar paths to tread, Where many a laden hour too quickly sped In happier times, before the dawn of war, Before the spoiler had whet his sword to mar The faithful living and the mighty dead.

It is not that my soul is weighed with woe, But rather wonder, seeing they do but sleep. As birds that in the sinking summer sweep Across the heaven to happier climes to go, So they are gone; and sometimes we must weep, And sometimes, smiling, murmur, "Be it so!"

Henry William Hutchinson

THE MESSINES ROAD

The road that runs up to Messines Is double-locked with gates of fire, Barred with high ramparts, and between The unbridged river, and the wire.

None ever goes up to Messines, For Death lurks all about the town, Death holds the vale as his demesne, And only Death moves up and down.

Choked with wild weeds, and overgrown With rank grass, all torn and rent By war's opposing engines, strewn With débris from each day's event!

And in the dark the broken trees, Whose arching boughs were once its shade, Grim and distorted, ghostly ease In groans their souls vexed and afraid.

Yet here the farmer drove his cart, Here friendly folk would meet and pass, Here bore the good wife eggs to mart And old and young walked up to Mass.

Here schoolboys lingered in the way, Here the bent packman laboured by, And lovers at the end o' the day Whispered their secret blushingly.