Poems of the Past and the Present

“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)

I

O it was sad enough, weak enough, mad enough —
Light in their loving as soldiers can be —
First to risk choosing them, leave alone losing them
Now, in far battle, beyond the South Sea!.

II

– Rain came down drenchingly; but we unblenchingly
Trudged on beside them through mirk and through mire,
They stepping steadily – only too readily! —
Scarce as if stepping brought parting-time nigher.

III

Great guns were gleaming there, living things seeming there,
Cloaked in their tar-cloths, upmouthed to the night;
Wheels wet and yellow from axle to felloe,
Throats blank of sound, but prophetic to sight.

IV

Gas-glimmers drearily, blearily, eerily
Lit our pale faces outstretched for one kiss,
While we stood prest to them, with a last quest to them
Not to court perils that honour could miss.

V

Sharp were those sighs of ours, blinded these eyes of ours,
When at last moved away under the arch
All we loved.   Aid for them each woman prayed for them,
Treading back slowly the track of their march.

VI

Someone said: “Nevermore will they come: evermore
Are they now lost to us.”  O it was wrong!
Though may be hard their ways, some Hand will guard their ways,
Bear them through safely, in brief time or long.

VII

– Yet, voices haunting us, daunting us, taunting us,
Hint in the night-time when life beats are low
Other and graver things.. Hold we to braver things,
Wait we, in trust, what Time’s fulness shall show.

AT THE WAR OFFICE, LONDON

(Affixing the Lists of Killed and Wounded: December, 1899)

I

Last year I called this world of gain-givings
The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly
If my own land could heave its pulse less gladly,
So charged it seemed with circumstance whence springs
The tragedy of things.

II

Yet at that censured time no heart was rent
Or feature blanched of parent, wife, or daughter
By hourly blazoned sheets of listed slaughter;
Death waited Nature’s wont; Peace smiled unshent
From Ind to Occident.

A CHRISTMAS GHOST-STORY

South of the Line, inland from far Durban,
A mouldering soldier lies – your countryman.