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

see
    Â Â Â Â Â The English soldiers pass.
    We used to pass – we used to pass
    Â Â Â Â Â Or halt, as it might be,
    And ship our masks in case of gas
    Â Â Â Â Â Beyond Gethsemane.
    The Garden called Gethsemane,
    10                  It held a pretty lass,
    But all the time she talked to me
    Â Â Â Â Â I prayed my cup might pass.
    The officer sat on the chair,
    Â Â Â Â Â The men lay on the grass,
    And all the time we halted there
    Â Â Â Â Â I prayed my cup might pass –
    It didn’t pass – it didn’t pass –
    Â Â Â Â Â It didn’t pass from me.
    I drank it when we met the gas
    20                Beyond Gethsemane.
    Rudyard Kipling
    Anthem for Doomed Youth
    What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
    Â Â Â Â Â Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
    Â Â Â Â Â Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
    Can patter out their hasty orisons.
    No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,
    Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
    The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
    And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
    What candles may be held to speed them all?
    10                  Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
    Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
    Â Â Â Â Â The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
    Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
    And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
    Wilfred Owen
    The Navigators
    I saw the bodies of earth’s men
    Â Â Â Â Â Like wharves thrust in the stream of time
    Â Â Â Â Â Whereon cramped navigators climb
    And free themselves in the warm sun:
    With outflung arms and shouts of joy
    Â Â Â Â Â Those spirits tramped their human planks;
    Â Â Â Â Â Then pressing close, reforming ranks,
    They pushed off in the stream again:
    Cold darkly rotting lay the wharves,
    10                  Decaying in the stream of time;
    Â Â Â Â Â Slow winding silver tracks of slime
    Showed bright where came back none.
    W. J. Turner
    Spring Offensive
    Halted against the shade of a last hill,
    They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
    And, finding comfortable chests and knees
    Carelessly slept. But many there stood still
    To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
    Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.
    Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
    By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,
    For though the summer oozed into their veins
    10             Like the injected drug for their bones’ pains,
    Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,
    Fearfully flashed the sky’s mysterious glass.
    Hour after hour they ponder the warm field –
    And the far valley behind, where the buttercups
    Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,
    Where even the little brambles would not yield,
    But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;
    They breathe like trees unstirred.
    Till like a cold gust thrilled the little word
    20             At which each body and its soul begird
    And tighten them for battle. No alarms
    Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste –
    Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced
    The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.
    O larger shone that smile against the sun, –
    Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.
    So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together
    Over an open stretch of herb and heather
    Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned
    30             With fury against them; and soft sudden cups
    Opened in thousands for their blood; and the green