SONNETS 1917

Though heaven be packed with joy-bewildering Pleasures of soul and heart and mind, yet who Would willingly let slip, freely let go Earth’s mortal loveliness; go wandering Where never the late bird is heard to sing, Nor full-sailed cloud-galleons wander slow; No pathways in the woods; no afterglow, When the air’s fire and magic with sense of spring? So the dark horror clouds us, and the dread Of the unknown.... But if it must be, then What better passing than to go out like men For England, giving all in one white glow? Whose bodies shall lie in earth as on a bed, And as the Will directs our spirits may go

Pain, pain continual; pain unending; Hard even to the roughest, but to those Hungry for beauty.... Not the wisest knows, Nor most pitiful-hearted, what the wending Of one hour’s way meant. Grey monotony lending Weight to the grey skies, grey mud where goes An army of grey bedrenched scarecrows in rows Careless at last of cruellest Fate-sending. Seeing the pitiful eyes of men foredone, Or horses shot, too tired merely to stir, Dying in shell-holes both, slain by the mud. Men broken, shrieking even to hear a gun.— Till pain grinds down, or lethargy numbs her, The amazed heart cries angrily out on God.

If it were not for England, who would bear This heavy servitude one moment more? To keep a brothel, sweep and wash the floor Of filthiest hovels were noble to compare With this brass-cleaning life. Now here, now there Harried in foolishness, scanned curiously o’er By fools made brazen by conceit, and store Of antique witticisms thin and bare. Only the love of comrades sweetens all, Whose laughing spirit will not be outdone. As night-watching men wait for the sun To hearten them, so wait I on such boys As neither brass nor Hell-fire may appal, Nor guns, nor sergeant-major’s bluster and noise.

When we go wandering the wide air’s blue spaces, Bare, unhappy, exiled souls of men; How will our thoughts over and over again Return to Earth’s familiar lovely places, Where light with shadow ever interlaces— No blanks of blue, nor ways beyond man’s ken— Where birds are, and flowers, as violet, and wren, Blackbird, bluebell, hedge-sparrow, tiny daisies. O tiny things, but very stuff of soul To us ... so frail.... Remember what we are; Set us not on some strange outlandish star, But one caring for Love. Give us a Home. There we may wait while the long ages roll Content, unfrightened by vast Time-to-come.

We have done our utmost, England, terrible And dear taskmistress, darling Mother and stern. The unnoticed nations praise us, but we turn Firstly, only to thee—“Have we done well? Say, are you pleased?”—and watch your eyes that tell To us all secrets, eyes sea-deep that burn With love so long denied; with tears discern The scars and haggard look of all that hell. Thy love, thy love shall cherish, make us whole, Whereto the power of Death’s destruction is weak. Death impotent, by boys bemocked at, who Will leave unblotted in the soldier-soul Gold of the daffodil, the sunset streak, The innocence and joy of England’s blue.