War Poems

EMBARCATION (Southampton Docks: October, 1899)

HERE, where Vespasian’s legions struck the sands, And Cerdic with his Saxons entered in, And Henry’s army leapt afloat to win Convincing triumphs over neighbour lands,

Vaster battalions press for further strands, To argue in the self-same bloody mode Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code, Still fails to mend.—Now deckward tramp the bands, Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring; And as each host draws out upon the sea Beyond which lies the tragical To-be, None dubious of the cause, none murmuring,

Wives, sisters, parents, wave white hands and smile, As if they knew not that they weep the while.

DEPARTURE (Southampton Docks: October, 1899)

WHILE the far farewell music thins and fails, And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine— All smalling slowly to the gray sea line— And each significant red smoke-shaft pales,

Keen sense of severance everywhere prevails, Which shapes the late long tramp of mounting men To seeming words that ask and ask again: “How long, O striving Teutons, Slavs, and Gaels Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these, That are as puppets in a playing hand?— When shall the saner softer polities Whereof we dream, have play in each proud land, And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?”

THE COLONEL’S SOLILOQUY (Southampton Docks: October, 1899)

“THE quay recedes. Hurrah! Ahead we go! . . . It’s true I’ve been accustomed now to home, And joints get rusty, and one’s limbs may grow More fit to rest than roam.

“But I can stand as yet fair stress and strain; There’s not a little steel beneath the rust; My years mount somewhat, but here’s to’t again! And if I fall, I must.

“God knows that for myself I’ve scanty care; Past scrimmages have proved as much to all; In Eastern lands and South I’ve had my share Both of the blade and ball.

“And where those villains ripped me in the flitch With their old iron in my early time, I’m apt at change of wind to feel a twitch, Or at a change of clime.

“And what my mirror shows me in the morning Has more of blotch and wrinkle than of bloom; My eyes, too, heretofore all glasses scorning, Have just a touch of rheum . . .

“Now sounds ‘The Girl I’ve left behind me,’—Ah, The years, the ardours, wakened by that tune! Time was when, with the crowd’s farewell ‘Hurrah!’ ’Twould lift me to the moon.

“But now it’s late to leave behind me one Who if, poor soul, her man goes underground, Will not recover as she might have done In days when hopes abound.

“She’s waving from the wharfside, palely grieving, As down we draw . . . Her tears make little show, Yet now she suffers more than at my leaving Some twenty years ago.

“I pray those left at home will care for her! I shall come back; I have before; though when The Girl you leave behind you is a grandmother, Things may not be as then.”

THE GOING OF THE BATTERY WIVES’ LAMENT (November 2, 1899)