TWO HUNDRED YEARS AFTER

Trudging by Corbie Ridge one winter’s night,
(Unless old, hearsay memories tricked his sight),
Along the pallid edge of the quiet sky
He watched a nosing lorry grinding on,
And straggling files of men; when these were gone,
A double limber and six mules went by,
Hauling the rations up through ruts and mud
To trench-lines digged two hundred years ago. 
Then darkness hid them with a rainy scud,
And soon he saw the village lights below.

But when he’d told his tale, an old man said
That he’d seen soldiers pass along that hill;
“Poor, silent things, they were the English dead
Who came to fight in France and got their fill.”

THE DREAM

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,
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. 
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.

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;
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
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 accursed Line.

IV

I cannot hear their voices, but I see
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.