Reading

THE PENGUIN BOOK OF FIRST WORLD WAR POETRY
Edited with an introduction by George Walter

CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY
"Such, Such is Death"

Such, such is Death: no triumph: no defeat:
Only an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean,
A merciful putting away of what has been.

And this we know: Death is not Life, effete,
Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen
So marvellous things know well the end not yet.

Victor and vanquished are a-one in death:
Coward and brave: friend, foe. Ghosts do not say,
“Come, what was your record when you drew breath?”
But a big blot has hid each yesterday
So poor, so manifestly incomplete.
And your bright Promise, withered long and sped,
Is touched, stirs, rises, opens and grows sweet
And blossoms and is you, when you are dead.

CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY
"When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead"

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, “They are dead.” Then add thereto,
“Yet many a better one has died before.”
Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.

WILFRED OWEN

"Dulce et decorum est"

____________________

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.-

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

WILFRED OWEN

"Mental Cases"

____________________

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?

Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,

Drooping tongues from jays that slob their relish,

Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked?

Stroke on stroke of pain,- but what slow panic,

Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?

Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms

Misery swelters. Surely we have perished

Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

-These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.

Memory fingers in their hair of murders,

Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.

Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,

Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.

Always they must see these things and hear them,

Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,

Carnage incomparable, and human squander

Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented

Back into their brains, because on their sense

Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black;

Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.

-Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,

Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.

-Thus their hands are plucking at each other;

Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;

Snatching after us who smote them, brother,

Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.

WILFRED OWEN

"Exposure"

____________________

I

1 Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us ...

2 Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent ...

3 Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient ...

4 Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,

5 But nothing happens.

6 Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.

7 Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.

8 Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,

9 Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.

10 What are we doing here?

11 The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow ...

12 We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.

13 Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army

14 Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray,

15 But nothing happens.

16 Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.

17 Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,

18 With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause and renew,

19 We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance,

20 But nothing happens.

II

21 Pale flakes with lingering stealth come feeling for our faces--

22 We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,

23 Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,

24 Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.

25 Is it that we are dying?

26 Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires glozed

27 With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;

28 For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;

29 Shutters and doors all closed: on us the doors are closed--

30 We turn back to our dying.

31 Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;

32 Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.

33 For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;

34 Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,

35 For love of God seems dying.

36 To-night, His frost will fasten on this mud and us,

37 Shrivelling many hands and puckering foreheads crisp.

38 The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp,

39 Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,

40 But nothing happens.