Sunday WW1 Poet.....

This month's theme 

The Female Poets of the First World War



Lady Margaret Sackville

1881-1963



A Memory

There was no sound at all, no crying in the village,

Nothing you would count as sound, that is, after the shells;

Only behind a wall the low sobbing of women, 

The creaking of a door, a lost dog-nothing else.

Silence which might be felt, no pity in the silence, 

Horrible, soft like blood, down all the blood-stained ways;

In the middle of the street two corpses lie unburied, 

And a bayoneted woman stares in the market-place.

Humble and ruined folk-for these no pride of conquest, 

Their only prayer: "O Lord, give us our daily bread!"

Not by the battle fires, the shrapnel are we haunted; 

Who shall deliver us from the memory of these dead?

Lady Margaret Sackville was the daughter of the 7th Earl de la Warr. She was a poet and children's author. During WW1 she published a book of poems entitled The Pageant of War (1916). Her brother the 8th Earl of de la Warr was killed in battle in 1915.

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