Free The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry by Various Contributors

’ave a look!’
    â€˜Come on, Ginger, drop that book!’
    â€˜Wot an ‘ell of bloody noise!’
    â€˜It’s the Yorks and Lancs, meboys!’
    So we crowd: watch them come –
    10             One man drubbing on a drum,
    A crazy, high mouth-organ blowing,
    Tin cans rattling, cat-calls, crowing…
    And above their rhythmic feet
    A whirl of shrilling loud and sweet,
    Round mouths whistling in unison;
    Shouts: ‘’O’s goin’ to out the ’Un?’
    â€˜Back us up, mates!’ ‘Gawd, we will!’
    â€˜â€™Eave them shells at Kaiser Bill!’
    â€˜Art from Lancashire, melad?’
    20             ‘Gi’ ’en a cheer, boys; make’en glad.’
    â€˜â€™Ip ‘urrah!’ ‘Give Fritz the chuck.’
    â€˜Good ol’ bloody Yorks!’ ‘Good-luck!’
    â€˜Cheer!’
    Â Â Â Â Â I cannot cheer or speak
    Lest my voice, my heart must break.
    Robert Nichols
    Headquarters
    A league and a league from the trenches – from the traversed maze of the lines,
    Where daylong the sniper watches and daylong the bullet whines,
    And the cratered earth is in travail with mines and with countermines –
    Here, where haply some woman dreamed, (are those her roses that bloom
    In the garden beyond the windows of my littered working room?)
    We have decked the map for our masters as a bride is decked for the groom.
    Fair, on each lettered numbered square – cross-road and mound and wire,
    Loophole, redoubt, and emplacement – lie the targets their mouths desire;
    Gay with purples and browns and blues, have we traced them their arcs of fire.
    10             And ever the type-keys chatter; and ever our keen wires bring
    Word from the watchers a-crouch below, word from the watchers a-wing:
    And ever we hear the distant growl of our hid guns thundering.
    Hear it hardly, and turn again to our maps, where the trench-lines crawl,
    Red on the gray and each with a sign for the ranging shrapnel’s fall –
    Snakes that our masters shall scotch at dawn, as is written here on the wall.
    For the weeks of our waiting draw to a close…There is scarcely a leaf astir
    In the garden beyond my windows, where the twilight shadows blurr
    The blaze of some woman’s roses…
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â â€˜Bombardment orders, sir.’
    Gilbert Frankau
    Bombardment
    The Town has opened to the sun.
    Like a flat red lily with a million petals
    She unfolds, she comes undone.
    A sharp sky brushes upon
    The myriad glittering chimney-tips
    As she gently exhales to the sun.
    Hurrying creatures run
    Down the labyrinth of the sinister flower.
    What is it they shun?
    10             A dark bird falls from the sun.
    It curves in a rush to the heart of the vast
    Flower: the day has begun.
    D. H. Lawrence
    The Shell
    Shrieking its message the flying death
    Â Â Â Â Â Cursed the resisting air,
    Then buried its nose by a battered church,
    Â Â Â Â Â A skeleton gaunt and bare.
    The brains of science, the money of fools
    Â Â Â Â Â Had fashioned an iron slave
    Destined to kill, yet the futile end
    Â Â Â Â Â Was a child’s uprooted grave.
    H. Smalley Sarson
    Bombardment
    Four days the earth was rent and torn
    By bursting steel,
    The houses fell about us;
    Three nights we dared not sleep,
    Sweating, and listening for the imminent crash
    Which meant our death.
    The fourth night every man,
    Nerve-tortured, racked to exhaustion,
    Slept, muttering and twitching,
    10             While the shells crashed overhead.
    The fifth day there came a hush;
    We left our