FROM “W” BEACH The Isle of Imbros, set in turquoise blue,
Lies to the westward; on the eastern side
The purple hills of Asia fade from view,
And rolling battleships at anchor ride.
White flocks of cloud float by, the sunset glows,
And dipping gulls fleck a slow-waking sea,
Where dim steel-shadowed forms with foaming bows
Wind up the Narrows towards Gallipoli.
No colour breaks this tongue of barren land
Save where a group of huddled tents gleams white;
Before me ugly shapes like spectres stand,
And wooden crosses cleave the waning light.
Celestial gardeners speed the hurrying day
And sow the plains of night with silver grain;
So shall this transient havoc fade away
And the proud cape be beautiful again.
Laden with figs and olives, or a freight
Of purple grapes, tanned singing men shall row,
Chanting wild songs of how Eternal Fate
Withstood that fierce invasion long ago.
A PRAYER Lord, keep him near to me:
Revive his image, let my darkening sight
Renew his life by death intensified
(His beating life so pitifully tried)
That we may face the night
And shade the agony.
We pray in barren stress
Where stricken men await the shrill alarm
And nightly watch, in silent order set,
The beckoning stars enshrine the parapet.
Lord, keep his soul from harm
And grant him happiness.
When all the world is free,
And, cleansed and purified by floods of pain
We turn, and see the light in human eyes;
When the last echo of War’s thunder dies;
Lord, let us pause again
In silent memory.
Gallipoli, October, 1915.
FALLEN The days shall darken and sink down to Night,
And Night shall break in the bleak dawn of Day:
The years shall dim his face, our fleeting sight
Shall see his splendid image fade away
Beyond the knowledge of our drifting thought
Which moves in circles to the source again,
Beyond dark seas with shivering stars inwrought
Beyond war-burdened men in stricken pain.
I searched in rage and passionate despair
Down winding paths of thought, and comradeless
In the full surge and tumult where he died
I turned; and saw my Brother standing there.
His face was like a dawning happiness—
I saw wounds in his hands, his feet, his side.
Gallipoli, October, 1915.
THE TURKISH TRENCH DOG Night held me as I crawled and scrambled near
The Turkish lines. Above, the mocking stars
Silvered the curving parapet, and clear
Cloud-latticed beams o’erflecked the land with bars
I, crouching, lay between
Tense-listening armies peering through the night,
Twin giants bound by tentacles unseen.
Here in dim-shadowed light
I saw him, as a sudden movement turned
His eyes towards me, glowing eyes that burned
A moment ere his snuffling muzzle found
My trail; and then as serpents mesmerise
He chained me with those unrelenting eyes,
That muscle-sliding rhythm, knit and bound
In spare-limbed symmetry, those perfect jaws
And soft-approaching pitter-patter paws.
Nearer and nearer like a wolf he crept—
That moment had my swift revolver leapt—
But terror seized me, terror born of shame
Brought flooding revelation. For he came
As one who offers comradeship deserved,
An open ally of the human race,
And sniffing at my prostrate form unnerved
He licked my face!
THE SENTINEL
An Episode at the Evacuation of Gallipoli. He stood enveloped in the darkening mist
High on the cape that proudly kept her tryst
Above the narrow portal. All the day
White shell-flung water-spouts had scattered spray
Round Helles, warden of the Eastern seas;
And still the boom of Asian batteries
Rumbled around the cape. The sentinel
Spied from his high cliff-towered citadel
The leaping flash of guns; but ere the roar
Sprang from its den on the dim Asian shore,
He blew a trumpet. Then, like burrowing moles,
Dim forms below dashed headlong to their holes,
The while that hurtling iron crossed the sea,
And fifteen seconds seemed eternity.
Below we lay
Crushed in a lighter; and the towering spray
That lately blurred the clear star-laden sea
Subsided in the vast tranquillity.
Now, chafing like taut-muscled charioteers
With every sense on tiptoe, we strained ears
For whispers, or the catch of indrawn breath.
Still not the word to cut adrift the rope
That moored us to a wharf of floating piers:
And thus alternately in fear and hope
Swung the grim pendulum of life and death.
Then suddenly the sound
Of that loud warning rang the cape around.
We knew a gun had flashed, we knew the roar
That instant rumbled from the Asian shore;
And we lie fettered to a raft!... The shell
Climbs its high trajectory ... Well,
What of it? Fifteen seconds less or more
One—two—three—four—five—six—seven
(Steady, man,
It’s only Asiatic Ann) ...
How slow the moments trickle—eight—nine—ten
(They’re wonderful, these men).
Am I a coward? I can count no more;
Hold Thou my hands, O God.
The sea, upheaved in anger, rocked and swirled;
Niagara seemed pelting from the stars
In tumult that epitomised a world
Roused by the battling impotence of wars.
We heard a whispered order to escape,
And casting loose, incredulously free,
Unscathed, exulting in the amber light
We left behind the immemorial cape.
But still above the indomitable sea
From his high cliff a sentry watched the night
MUDROS AFTER THE EVACUATION I laughed to see the gulls that dipped to cling
To the torn edge of surf and blowing spray,
Where some gaunt battleship, a rolling king,
Still dreams of phantom battles in the bay.
I saw a cloud, a full-blown cotton flower
Drift vaguely like a wandering butterfly,
I laughed to think it bore no pregnant shower
Of blinding shrapnel scattered from the sky.
Life bore new hope. An army’s great release
From a closed cage walled in by fire and sea,
From the hushed pause and swooping plunge of shells,
Sped in a night. Here children in strange peace,
Seek solitude to dull the tragedy,
And needless horror of the Dardanelles.
Mudros, January, 1916.
THE DEAD TURK Dead, dead, and dumbly chill. He seemed to lie
Carved from the earth, in beauty without stain
And suddenly
Day turned to night, and I beheld again
A still Centurion with eyes ablaze:
And Calvary re-echoed with his cry—
His cry of stark amaze.
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