I
MOONLIGHT and dew-drenched blossom, and the scent | |
| Of summer gardens; these can bring you all | |
| Those dreams that in the starlit silence fall: | |
Sweet songs are full of odours.
While I went | |
| Last night in drizzling dusk along a lane, | 5 |
| I passed a squalid farm; from byre and midden | |
| Came the rank smell that brought me once again | |
| A dream of war that in the past was hidden. | |
| |
II
Up a disconsolate straggling village street | |
| I saw the tired troops trudge: I heard their feet. | 10 |
| The cheery Q.M.S. was there to meet | |
And guide our Company in...
I watched them stumble | |
| Into some crazy hovel, too beat to grumble; | |
| Saw them file inward, slipping from their backs | |
| Rifles, equipment, packs. | 15 |
| On filthy straw they sit in the gloom, each face | |
| Bowed to patched, sodden boots they must unlace, | |
| While the wind chills their sweat through chinks and cracks. | |
| |
III
I’m looking at their blistered feet; young Jones | |
| Stares up at me, mud-splashed and white and jaded; | 20 |
| Out of his eyes the morning light has faded. | |
| Old soldiers with three winters in their bones | |
| Puff their damp Woodbines, whistle, stretch their toes: | |
| They can still grin at me, for each of ’em knows | |
That I’m as tired as they are...
Can they guess | 25 |
| The secret burden that is always mine?— | |
| Pride in their courage; pity for their distress; | |
| And burning bitterness | |
| That I must take them to the accursèd Line. | |
| |
IV
I cannot hear their voices, but I see | 30 |
| Dim candles in the barn: they gulp their tea, | |
| And soon they’ll sleep like logs. Ten miles away | |
| The battle winks and thuds in blundering strife. | |
| And I must lead them nearer, day by day, | |
| To the foul beast of war that bludgeons life. | 35 |
