英国战时诗人威尔弗雷德·欧文诗12首

威尔弗雷德·爱德华·索尔特·欧文，英国诗人兼军人。他是第一次世界大战的主要诗人之一。他关于战壕和毒气战恐怖的战争诗深受导师齐格弗里德·沙宣的影响，与当时公众对战争的看法以及鲁伯特·布鲁克等早期战争诗人所写的充满自信的爱国诗形成鲜明对比。在他最著名的作品中，大部分是在死后出版的，包括《杜尔塞与礼仪》、《麻木》、《注定的青春赞歌》、《徒劳》、《春季攻势》和《奇怪的会面》。

Wilfred Owen (March 18, 1893—Nov. 4, 1918) was a compassionate poet who's work provides the finest description and critique of the soldier's experience during World War One. He was killed towards the end of the conflict in Ors, France. 威尔弗雷德欧文（1893年3月18日至1918年11月4日）是一位富有同情心的诗人，他的作品对一战期间士兵的经历进行了最好的描述和批判。他在法国奥尔斯的冲突接近尾声时被杀。

Wilfred Owen's Youth

Wilfred Owen was born to an apparently wealthy family; however, within two years his grandfather died on the verge of bankruptcy and, missing his support, the family were forced into poorer housing at Birkenhead. This fallen status left a permanent impression on Wilfred's mother, and it may have combined with her staunch piety to produce a child who was sensible, serious, and who struggled to equate his wartime experiences with Christian teachings. Owen studied well at schools in Birkenhead and, after another family move, Shrewsbury—where he even helped to teach—but he failed the University of London's entrance exam. Consequently, Wilfred became lay assistant to the vicar of Dunsden—an Oxfordshire parish—under an arrangement designed so the vicar would tutor Owen for another attempt at University.威尔弗雷德·欧文出生在一个表面上很富裕的家庭；然而，两年之内，他的祖父在破产边缘去世，失去了他的支持，一家人被迫在伯肯黑德住得更穷。这种堕落的地位给威尔弗雷德的母亲留下了永久的印象，这可能与她坚定的虔诚结合在一起，造就了一个理智、严肃、努力将自己的战时经历与基督教教义等同起来的孩子。欧文在伯肯黑德（Birkenhead）的学校学习很好，在另一次家庭搬迁后，他甚至在什鲁斯伯里（Shrewsbury）帮忙教书，但他没有通过伦敦大学的入学考试。因此，威尔弗雷德成为了牛津郡一个教区邓斯登教区牧师的非专业助理，这是一项安排，目的是教区牧师指导欧文在大学的另一次尝试。

Early Poetry

Although commentators differ as to whether Owen started writing at the age 10/11 or 17, he was certainly producing poems during his time at Dunsden; conversely, the experts agree that Owen favored literature, as well as Botany, at school, and that his main poetic influence was Keats. The Dunsden poems exhibit the compassionate awareness so characteristic of Wilfred Owen's later war poetry, and the young poet found considerable material in the poverty and death he observed working for the church. Indeed, Wilfred Owen's written 'compassion' was often very close to morbidity.尽管评论员们对欧文是在10/11岁还是17岁开始写作存在分歧，但他在邓斯登期间肯定是在创作诗歌；相反，专家们一致认为，欧文在学校里喜欢文学，也喜欢植物学，他对诗歌的主要影响是济慈。邓斯登诗歌展现了威尔弗雷德·欧文后期战争诗歌所特有的同情心，而这位年轻诗人在为教会工作时所观察到的贫穷和死亡中找到了相当多的素材。事实上，威尔弗雷德欧文写的“同情”往往非常接近发病率。

Mental Problems

Wilfred's service in Dunsden may have made him more aware of the poor and less fortunate, but it didn't encourage a fondness for the church: away from his mother's influence he became critical of evangelical religion and intent on a different career, that of literature. Such thoughts led to a difficult and troubled period during January 1913, when Wilfred and Dunsden's vicar appear to have argued, and - or because perhaps as a result of - Owen suffered a near nervous breakdown. He left the parish, spending the following summer recovering.威尔弗雷德在邓斯登的服务也许使他更加了解穷人和不幸的人，但这并没有鼓励他对教会的喜爱：离开母亲的影响，他开始批评福音派宗教，并致力于另一种职业，即文学。1913年1月，威尔弗雷德和邓斯登的牧师似乎发生了争执，或者可能是因为欧文几近神经衰弱，这种想法导致了一个困难和麻烦的时期。他离开了教区，度过了第二个夏天恢复健康。

Travel

During this period of relaxation Wilfred Owen wrote what critics often label his first 'war-poem' - 'Uriconium, an Ode' - after visiting an archaeological dig. The remains were Roman, and Owen described ancient combat with especial reference to the bodies he observed being unearthed. However, he failed to gain a scholarship to university and so left England, traveling to the continent and a position teaching English at the Berlitz school in Bordeaux. Owen was to remain in France for over two years, during which time he began a collection of poetry: it was never published.在这段放松时期，威尔弗雷德·欧文在参观了一处考古发掘后，写下了批评家们常称之为他的第一首“战争诗”——“乌里科尼姆，一首颂歌”。遗骸是罗马人的，欧文在描述古代战斗时特别提到了他观察到的出土尸体。然而，他没能获得大学奖学金，于是离开英国，前往欧洲大陆，在波尔多的贝利茨学校（Berlitz school）担任英语教师。欧文在法国待了两年多，在此期间，他开始了一本诗集：从未出版过。

1915—Wilfred Owen Enlists in the Army

Although war seized Europe in 1914, it was only in 1915 that Owen considered the conflict to have expanded so considerably that he was needed by his country, whereupon he returned to Shrewsbury in September 1915, training as a private at Hare Hall Camp in Essex. Unlike many of the war's early recruits, the delay meant Owen was partly aware of the conflict he was entering, having visited a hospital for the wounded and having seen the carnage of modern warfare first-hand; however he still felt removed from events.尽管1914年战争席卷了欧洲，但直到1915年，欧文才认为冲突已经扩大到了国家需要的地步，于是他于1915年9月回到什鲁斯伯里，在埃塞克斯郡的黑尔霍尔营地作为一名士兵接受训练。与战争早期的许多新兵不同，延迟意味着欧文部分地意识到了他正在进入的冲突，他参观了一家伤员医院，亲眼目睹了现代战争的大屠杀；然而，他仍然觉得自己与事件无关。

Owen moved to the Officer's school in Essex during the March of 1916 before joining the Manchester Regiment in June, where he was graded '1st Class Shot' on a special course. An application to the Royal Flying Corps was rejected, and on December 30th 1916, Wilfred traveled to France, joining the 2nd Manchesters on January 12th 1917. They were positioned near Beaumont Hamel, on the Somme.欧文于1916年3月搬到埃塞克斯郡军官学校，6月加入曼彻斯特兵团，在那里他被评为“一等射击”的特殊课程。向皇家飞行队提出的申请被驳回，1916年12月30日，威尔弗雷德前往法国，于1917年1月12日加入曼彻斯特第二舰队。他们被安置在索姆河的博蒙特哈梅尔附近。

Wilfred Owen Sees Combat

Wilfred's own letters describe the following few days better than any writer or historian could hope to manage, but it is sufficient to say Owen and his men held a forward 'position', a muddy, flooded dug-out, for fifty hours as an artillery and shells raged around them. Having survived this, Owen remained active with the Manchesters, nearly getting frost bite in late January, suffering concussion in March—he fell through shell-damaged land into a cellar at Le Quesnoy-en-Santerre, earning him a trip behind the lines to hospital—and fighting in bitter combat at St. Quentin a few weeks later.威尔弗雷德自己的信对接下来几天的描述比任何一位作家或历史学家所能想到的都要好，但足以说明欧文和他的部下坚守着一个前沿的“阵地”，一个泥泞的、被洪水淹没的挖掘出来的阵地，在周围炮弹轰击了50个小时。幸免于难，欧文仍然活跃在曼彻斯特一家，一月底差点被冻伤，三月份他因脑震荡从被炮弹破坏的土地上摔进了勒奎斯诺恩桑特尔的地下室，几周后他在圣昆廷参加了激烈的战斗。

Shell Shock at Craiglockhart

It was after this latter battle, when Owen was caught in an explosion, that soldiers reported him acting rather strangely; he was diagnosed as having shell-shock and sent back to England for treatment in May. Owen arrived at the, now famous, Craiglockhart War Hospital on June 26th, an establishment sited outside Edinburgh. Over the next few months Wilfred wrote some of his finest poetry, the result of several stimuli. Owen's doctor, Arthur Brock, encouraged his patient to overcome shell-shock by working hard at his poetry and editing The Hydra, Craiglockhart's magazine. Meanwhile, Owen met another patient, Siegfried Sassoon, an established poet whose recently published war work inspired Wilfred and whose encouragement guided him; the exact debt owed by Owen to Sassoon is unclear, but the former certainly improved far beyond the latter's talents.正是在后一次战斗之后，欧文遭遇了一次爆炸，士兵们报告说他表现得相当奇怪；他被诊断为弹壳休克，并于5月被送回英国接受治疗。欧文于6月26日抵达了现在著名的克雷格洛克哈特战争医院，这家医院位于爱丁堡郊外。在接下来的几个月里，威尔弗雷德写了一些他最优秀的诗歌，这是几次刺激的结果。欧文的医生阿瑟·布洛克鼓励他的病人通过努力写诗和编辑克雷格洛克哈特的杂志《九头蛇》来克服壳牌休克。与此同时，欧文遇到了另一位病人，齐格弗里德·沙宣，一位公认的诗人，他最近出版的战争作品激励了威尔弗雷德，他的鼓励引导了他；欧文欠沙宣的确切债务还不清楚，但前者的进步肯定远远超过后者的才能。

Owen's War Poetry

In addition, Owen was exposed to the cloyingly sentimental writing and attitude of non-combatants who glorified the war, an attitude to which Wilfred reacted with fury. Further fueled by nightmares of his wartime experiences, Owen wrote classics like 'Anthem for Doomed Youth', rich and multi-layered works characterized by a brutal honesty and deep compassion for the soldiers/victims, many of which were direct ripostes to other authors.此外，欧文还接触到了非战斗人员美化战争的令人沮丧的感伤的写作和态度，威尔弗雷德对此反应强烈。欧文写的《战争时代的悲悯》和《战争时代的悲悯》等作品，更为深刻地反映了他对战争中的受害者的悲悯和悲悯。

It's important to note that Wilfred wasn't a simple pacifist—indeed, on occasions he railed against them—but a man sensitive to the burden of soldiery. Owen may have been self-important before the war—as betrayed by his letters home from France— but there is no self-pity in his war work.值得注意的是，威尔弗雷德并不是一个简单的和平主义者，有时他会对他们大发雷霆，而是一个对军人负担很敏感的人。欧文可能在战争前自命不凡，因为他从法国寄来的信背叛了他——但他的战争作品中没有自怜。

Owen Continues to Write While in the Reserves

Despite a low number of publications, Owen's poetry was now attracting attention, prompting supporters to request non-combat positions on his behalf, but these requests were turned down. It's questionable as to whether Wilfred would have accepted them: his letters reveal a sense of obligation, that he had to do his duty as poet and observe the conflict in person, a feeling exacerbated by Sassoon's renewed injuries and return from the front. Only by fighting could Owen earn respect, or escape the easy slurs of cowardice, and only a proud war-record would protect him from detractors.尽管发表的文章不多，但欧文的诗歌现在吸引了人们的注意，促使支持者代表他要求非战斗职位，但这些要求都被拒绝了。威尔弗雷德是否会接受这些信件是值得怀疑的：他的书信透露出一种责任感，他必须履行诗人的职责，亲自观察冲突，沙宣的伤势再次加重了这种感觉，并从前线回来。只有通过战斗，欧文才能赢得尊重，或者逃脱懦弱的轻蔑，只有一个自豪的战争记录才能保护他不受诽谤者的伤害。

Owen Returns to the Front and Is Killed

Owen was back in France by September—again as a company commander—and on September 29th he captured a machine gun position during an attack on the Beaurevoir-Fonsomme Line, for which he was awarded the Military Cross. After his battalion was rested in early October Owen saw in action again, his unit operating around the Oise-Sambre canal. Early in the morning of November 4th Owen led an attempt to cross the canal; he was struck and killed by enemy fire.欧文于9月再次回到法国，担任连长。9月29日，他在对博雷沃伊尔丰索姆防线的一次攻击中占领了一个机枪阵地，为此他被授予军事十字勋章。10月初他的营休息后，欧文又看到了他的部队在瓦兹-桑布雷运河附近行动。11月4日清晨，欧文率领一支试图横渡运河的队伍，被敌人的炮火击中身亡。

Aftermath

Owen's death was followed by one of World War One's most iconic stories: when the telegram reporting his demise was delivered to his parents, the local church bells could be heard ringing in celebration of the armistice. A collection of Owen's poems was soon created by Sassoon, although the numerous different versions, and the attendant difficulty in working out which were Owen's drafts and which were his preferred edits, led to two new editions in the early 1920's. The definitive edition of Wilfred's work may well be Jon Stallworthy's Complete Poems and Fragments from 1983, but all justify Owen's long-lasting acclaim.欧文的死后是一战中最具代表性的故事之一：当报告他去世的电报发给他的父母时，可以听到当地教堂的钟声敲响，庆祝停战。沙宣很快就创作出了欧文的诗集，尽管有许多不同的版本，加上很难确定哪些是欧文的草稿，哪些是他最喜欢的编辑，导致了20世纪20年代早期的两个新版本。威尔弗雷德作品的最终版本很可能是乔恩·斯塔尔沃西的完整诗歌和片段从1983年开始，但这一切都证明欧文的长期赞誉是合理的。

The War Poetry

The poetry is not for everyone, for within Owen combines graphic descriptions of trench life—gas, lice, mud, death—with an absence of glorification; dominant themes include the return of bodies to the earth, hell and the underworld. Wilfred Owen's poetry is remembered as reflecting the real life of the soldier, although critics and historians argue over whether he was overwhelming honest or overly scared by his experiences.这首诗并不是为所有人准备的，因为欧文在书中结合了沟渠生命气体、虱子、泥巴、死亡的生动描述，同时也没有赞美之词；主要的主题包括身体回归地球、地狱和阴间。威尔弗雷德·欧文的诗歌被认为是反映了这位士兵的真实生活，尽管评论家和历史学家争论他是绝对诚实还是被他的经历吓坏了。

He was certainly 'compassionate,' a word repeated throughout this biography and texts on Owen in general, and works like 'Disabled', focusing on the motives and thoughts of soldiers themselves, provide ample illustration of why. Owen's poetry is certainly free of the bitterness present in several historians' monographs on the conflict, and he is generally acknowledged as being the both the most successful, and best, poet of war's reality. The reason why may be found in the 'preface' to his poetry, of which a drafted fragment was found after Owen's death: "Yet these elegies are not to this generation, this is in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is to warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful." (Wilfred Owen, 'Preface')他当然“富有同情心”，这一词在这本传记和有关欧文的文本中反复出现，而像《残疾人》这样的作品关注士兵的动机和思想，提供了充分的理由说明。欧文的诗歌当然没有几部历史学家关于战争的专著中的苦涩，他被公认为是战争现实中最成功、最优秀的诗人。其原因可以在他的诗的“序言”中找到，在欧文死后发现了一段草稿：“然而这些挽歌对这一代人来说并不是，这毫无意义的安慰。他们可能是下一个。诗人今天所能做的就是警告。这就是为什么真正的诗人必须是真实的。”

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now 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?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

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.

Arms and the Boy

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade 

How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood; 

Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash; 

And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh. 

Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-leads, 

Which long to nuzzle in the hearts of lads, 

Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth 

Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death. 

For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple. 

There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple; 

And God will grow no talons at his heels, 

Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.

Disabled

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,

And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,

Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park 

Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn, 

Voices of play and pleasure after day, 

Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him. 

* * * * *

About this time Town used to swing so gay 

When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees, 

And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,— 

In the old times, before he threw away his knees. 

Now he will never feel again how slim 

Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands, 

All of them touch him like some queer disease. 

* * * * *

There was an artist silly for his face, 

For it was younger than his youth, last year. 

Now, he is old; his back will never brace; 

He's lost his colour very far from here, 

Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry, 

And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race 

And leap of purple spurted from his thigh. 

* * * * *

One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg, 

After the matches carried shoulder-high. 

It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg,

He thought he'd better join. He wonders why.

Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts. 

That's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg, 

Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts, 

He asked to join. He didn't have to beg; 

Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years.

Germans he scarcely thought of, all their guilt,

And Austria's, did not move him. And no fears 

Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts 

For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes; 

And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears; 

Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits. 

And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers. 

* * * * *

Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal. 

Only a solemn man who brought him fruits 

Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul. 

* * * * *

Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes,

And do what things the rules consider wise, 

And take whatever pity they may dole. 

Tonight he noticed how the women's eyes 

Passed from him to the strong men that were whole. 

How cold and late it is! Why don't they come 

And put him into bed? Why don't they come?

Dulce et Decorum Est 

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Exposure

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us . . . 

Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . . 

Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . . 

Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous, 

But nothing happens. 

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire, 

Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles. 

Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles, 

Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war. 

What are we doing here? 

The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow . . . 

We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy. 

Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army 

Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey, 

But nothing happens.

Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence. 

Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow, 

With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew, 

We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance, 

But nothing happens. 

Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces— 

We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed, 

Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed, 

Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses. 

—Is it that we are dying? 

Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed 

With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there; 

For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs; 

Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed,— 

We turn back to our dying. 

Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn; 

Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit. 

For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid; 

Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born, 

For love of God seems dying. 

Tonight, this frost will fasten on this mud and us, 

Shrivelling many hands, and puckering foreheads crisp. 

The burying-party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp,

Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice, 

But nothing happens.

Futility

Move him into the sun— 

Gently its touch awoke him once, 

At home, whispering of fields half-sown. 

Always it woke him, even in France, 

Until this morning and this snow. 

If anything might rouse him now 

The kind old sun will know. 

Think how it wakes the seeds— 

Woke once the clays of a cold star.

Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides 

Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir? 

Was it for this the clay grew tall? 

—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil 

To break earth's sleep at all?

Insensibility

 I 

Happy are men who yet before they are killed 

Can let their veins run cold. 

Whom no compassion fleers 

Or makes their feet 

Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers. 

The front line withers. 

But they are troops who fade, not flowers, 

For poets’ tearful fooling: 

Men, gaps for filling: 

Losses, who might have fought 

Longer; but no one bothers. 

II 

And some cease feeling 

Even themselves or for themselves. 

Dullness best solves 

The tease and doubt of shelling, 

And Chance’s strange arithmetic 

Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling. 

They keep no check on armies’ decimation. 

III 

Happy are these who lose imagination: 

They have enough to carry with ammunition. 

Their spirit drags no pack. 

Their old wounds, save with cold, can not more ache. 

Having seen all things red, 

Their eyes are rid 

Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever. 

And terror’s first constriction over, 

Their hearts remain small-drawn. 

Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle 

Now long since ironed, 

Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned. 

IV 

Happy the soldier home, with not a notion 

How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack, 

And many sighs are drained. 

Happy the lad whose mind was never trained: 

His days are worth forgetting more than not. 

He sings along the march 

Which we march taciturn, because of dusk, 

The long, forlorn, relentless trend 

From larger day to huger night. 

V 

We wise, who with a thought besmirch 

Blood over all our soul, 

How should we see our task 

But through his blunt and lashless eyes? 

Alive, he is not vital overmuch; 

Dying, not mortal overmuch; 

Nor sad, nor proud, 

Nor curious at all. 

He cannot tell 

Old men’s placidity from his. 

VI 

But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns, 

That they should be as stones. 

Wretched are they, and mean 

With paucity that never was simplicity. 

By choice they made themselves immune 

To pity and whatever moans in man 

Before the last sea and the hapless stars; 

Whatever mourns when many leave these shores; 

Whatever shares 

The eternal reciprocity of tears.

The Last Laugh

‘O Jesus Christ! I’m hit,’ he said; and died. 

Whether he vainly cursed or prayed indeed, 

 The Bullets chirped—In vain, vain, vain! 

 Machine-guns chuckled—Tut-tut! Tut-tut! 

 And the Big Gun guffawed. 

Another sighed,—‘O Mother,—mother,—Dad!’ 

Then smiled at nothing, childlike, being dead. 

 And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud 

 Leisurely gestured,—Fool! 

 And the splinters spat, and tittered.

‘My Love!’ one moaned. Love-languid seemed his mood, 

Till slowly lowered, his whole face kissed the mud. 

 And the Bayonets’ long teeth grinned; 

 Rabbles of Shells hooted and groaned; 

 And the Gas hissed.

S. I. W.

I will to the King,

And offer him consolation in his trouble,

For that man there has set his teeth to die,

And being one that hates obedience,

Discipline, and orderliness of life,

 I cannot mourn him.

 W.B. YEATS

I. THE PROLOGUE

Patting good-bye, doubtless they told the lad

He’d always show the Hun a brave man’s face;

Father would sooner him dead than in disgrace,—

Was proud to see him going, aye, and glad.

Perhaps his mother whimpered how she’d fret

Until he got a nice safe wound to nurse.

Sisters would wish girls too could shoot, charge, curse …

Brothers—would send his favourite cigarette.

Each week, month after month, they wrote the same,

Thinking him sheltered in some Y.M. Hut,

Because he said so, writing on his butt

Where once an hour a bullet missed its aim

And misses teased the hunger of his brain.

His eyes grew old with wincing, and his hand

Reckless with ague. Courage leaked, as sand

From the best sand-bags after years of rain.

But never leave, wound, fever, trench-foot, shock,

Untrapped the wretch. And death seemed still withheld

For torture of lying machinally shelled,

At the pleasure of this world’s Powers who’d run amok.

He’d seen men shoot their hands, on night patrol.

Their people never knew. Yet they were vile.

‘Death sooner than dishonour, that’s the style!’

So Father said.

II. THE ACTION

One dawn, our wire patrol

Carried him. This time, Death had not missed.

We could do nothing but wipe his bleeding cough.

Could it be accident? - Rifles go off…

Not sniped? No. (Later they found the English ball.)

III. THE POEM

It was the reasoned crisis of his soul

Against more days of inescapable thrall,

Against infrangibly wired and blind trench wall

Curtained with fire, roofed in with creeping fire,

Slow grazing fire, that would not burn him whole

But kept him for death’s promises and scoff,

And life’s half-promising, and both their riling.

IV. THE EPILOGUE

With him they buried the muzzle his teeth had kissed,

And truthfully wrote the Mother, ‘Tim died smiling’.

The Send-Off

Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way

To the siding-shed,

And lined the train with faces grimly gay.

Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray

As men's are, dead.

Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp

Stood staring hard,

Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.

Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp

Winked to the guard.

So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.

They were not ours:

We never heard to which front these were sent.

Nor there if they yet mock what women meant

Who gave them flowers.

Shall they return to beatings of great bells

In wild trainloads?

A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,

May creep back, silent, to still village wells

Up half-known roads.

Smile, Smile, Smile

Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned

Yesterday's Mail; the casualties (typed small)

And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.

Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned;

“For,” said the paper, “when this war is done

The men's first instinct will be making homes.

Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes,

It being certain war has just begun.

Peace would do wrong to our undying dead,—

The sons we offered might regret they died

If we got nothing lasting in their stead.

We must be solidly indemnified.

Though all be worthy Victory which all bought.

We rulers sitting in this ancient spot

Would wrong our very selves if we forgot

The greatest glory will be theirs who fought,

Who kept this nation in integrity.”

Nation?—The half-limbed readers did not chafe

But smiled at one another curiously

Like secret men who know their secret safe.

(This is the thing they know and never speak,

That England one by one had fled to France

Not many elsewhere now save under France).

Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week,

And people in whose voice real feeling rings

Say: How they smile! They're happy now, poor things.

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

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

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

With fury against them; and soft sudden cups

Opened in thousands for their blood; and the green slopes

Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.

Of them who running on that last high place

Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up

On the hot blast and fury of hell’s upsurge,

Or plunged and fell away past this world’s verge,

Some say God caught them even before they fell.

But what say such as from existence’ brink

Ventured but drave too swift to sink.

The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,

And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames

With superhuman inhumanities,

Long-famous glories, immemorial shames—

And crawling slowly back, have by degrees

Regained cool peaceful air in wonder—

Why speak they not of comrades that went under?

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