Sunday WW1 Poem..

The theme for this month's WW1 poetry

 is

HOME

Picnic

by

Rose Macauley

1889-1958

We lay and ate the sweet hurt-berries

In the bracken of Hurt Wood.

Like a quire of singers singing low

The dark pines stood.

Behind us climbed the Surrey Hills,

Wild, wild in greenery;

At our feet the downs of Sussex broke

To an unseen sea.

And life was bound in a still ring,

Drowsy, and quiet and sweet….

When heavily up the south-east wind

The great guns beat.

We did not wince, we did not weep,

We did not curse or pray;

We drowsily heard, and someone said,

‘They sound clear today’.

We did not shake with pity and pain,

Or sicken and blanch white.

We said, ’If the wind’s from over there

There’ll be rain tonight’.

Once pity we knew, and rage we knew,

And pain we knew, too well,

As we stared and peered dizzily

Through the gates of hell.

But now hell’s gates are an old tale;

Remote the anguish seems;

The guns are muffled and far away.

Dreams within dreams.

And far and far are Flanders mud,

And the pain of Picardy;

And the blood that runs there runs beyond

The wide waste sea.

We are shut about by guarding walls;

(We have built them lest we run

Mad from dreaming of naked fear

And of black things done).

We are ringed all round by guarding walls,

So high, they shut the view.

Not all the guns that shatter the world

Can quite break through.

Oh guns of France, oh guns of France,

Be still, you crash in vain….

Heavily up the south wind throb

Dull dreams of pain…..

Be still, be still, south wind, lest your

Blowing should bring the rain…...

We’ll lie very quiet on Hurt Hill,

And sleep once again.

Oh we’ll lie quite still, not listen nor look,

While the earth’s bounds reel and shake,

Lest, battered too long, our walls and we

Should break…....should break…….... 

Dame Rose Macaulay was born in Cambridge.
 She went to school and college in Oxford but spent most of her childhood in Italy. She was a prominent novelist, essayist and poet and won many literary prizes.



~***~

Sunday War Poet ....

Rose Macaulay

(1881 - 1958)

Many Sisters to Many Brothers

When we fought campaigns (in the long Christmas rains)

    With soldiers spread in troops on the floor,

  I shot as straight as you, my losses were as few,

    My victories as many, or more.

  And in naval battle, when, amid the rattle

    Of cannon, fleet met fleet in the bath,

  My cruisers were as trim, my battleships as grim,

    My submarines cut as swift a path.

  Or, when it rained too long, and the strength of the strong

    Surged up and broke a way with blows,

  I was as fit and keen, my fists hit as clean,

    Your black eye matched my bleeding nose.

  Was there a scrap or ploy in which you, the boy,

    Could better me?  You could not climb higher,

  Ride straighter, run as quick (and to smoke made you sick)

    . . . But I sit here, and you're under fire.

  Oh, it's you that have the luck, out there in blood and muck:

    You were born beneath a kindly star;

  All we dreamed, I and you, you can really go and do,

    And I can't, the way things are.

  In a trench you are sitting, while I am knitting

    A hopeless sock that never gets done.

  Well, here's luck, my dear; ― and you've got it, no fear;

    But for me . . . a war is poor fun.

***

Dame Emilie Rose Macaulay, DBE was a British writer. During  WW1 Macaulay worked in the British Propaganda Department after some time as a nurse and later as a civil servant in the war Office. She published thirty-five books, mostly novels but also biographies and travel writing. 

*~*~*