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

lure
    Â Â Â Â Â When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!
    Your slender attitude
    Â Â Â Â Â Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
    Rolling and rolling there
    10             Where God seems not to care;
    Till the fierce Love they bear
    Â Â Â Â Â Cramps them in death’s extreme decrepitude.
    Your voice sings not so soft, –
    Â Â Â Â Â Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft, –
    Your dear voice is not dear, Gentle, and evening clear,
    As theirs whom none now hear
    Â Â Â Â Â Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.
    Heart, you were never hot,
    20                  Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
    And though your hand be pale,
    Paler are all which trail
    Your cross through flame and hail:
    Â Â Â Â Â Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.
    Wilfred Owen
    In Memoriam Private D. Sutherland killed in Action in the German Trench, May 16, 1916, and the Others who Died
    So you were David’s father,
    And he was your only son,
    And the new-cut peats are rotting
    And the work is left undone,
    Because of an old man weeping,
    Just an old man in pain,
    For David, his son David,
    That will not come again.
    Oh, the letters he wrote you,
    10             And I can see them still,
    Not a word of the fighting
    But just the sheep on the hill
    And how you should get the crops in
    Ere the year got stormier,
    And the Bosches have got his body,
    And I was his officer.
    You were only David’s father,
    But I had fifty sons
    When we went up in the evening
    20             Under the arch of the guns,
    And we came back at twilight –
    O God! I heard them call
    To me for help and pity
    That could not help at all.
    Oh, never will I forget you,
    My men that trusted me,
    More my sons than your fathers’,
    For they could only see
    The little helpless babies
    30             And the young men in their pride.
    They could not see you dying,
    And hold you while you died.
    Happy and young and gallant,
    They saw their first-born go,
    But not the strong limbs broken
    And the beautiful men brought low,
    The piteous writhing bodies,
    They screamed, ‘Don’t leave me, Sir,‘
    For they were only your fathers
    40             But I was your officer.
    E. A. Mackintosh
    To his Love
    He’s gone, and all our plans
    Â Â Â Â Â Are useless indeed.
    We’ll walk no more on Cotswold
    Â Â Â Â Â Where the sheep feed
    Â Â Â Â Â Quietly and take no heed.
    His body that was so quick
    Â Â Â Â Â Is not as you
    Knew it, on Severn river
    Â Â Â Â Â Under the blue
    10                  Driving our small boat through.
    You would not know him now…
    Â Â Â Â Â But still he died
    Nobly, so cover him over
    Â Â Â Â Â With violets of pride
    Â Â Â Â Â Purple from Severn side.
    Cover him, cover him soon!
    Â Â Â Â Â And with thick-set
    Masses of memoried flowers –
    Â Â Â Â Â Hide that red wet
    20                  Thing I must somehow forget.
    Ivor Gurney
    Trench Poets
    I knew a man, he was my chum,
    But he grew blacker every day,
    And would not brush the flies away,
    Nor blanch however fierce the hum
    Of passing shells; I used to read,
    To rouse him, random things from Donne;
    Like ‘Get with child a mandrake-root,‘
    But you can tell he was far gone,
    For he lay gaping, mackerel-eyed,
    10             And stiff, and senseless as a post
    Even when that old poet cried
    â€˜I long to talk with some old lover’s ghost.’
    I tried