In War-Time 1 Troopship (s.s. Baltic: Mid-Atlantic: July, 1917) | Dark waters into crystalline brilliance break About the keel, as through the moonless night The dark ship moves in its own moving lake Of phosphorescent cold moon-coloured light; And to the clear horizon, all around Drift pools of fiery beryl flashing bright As though, still flashing, quenchless, cold and white, A million moons in the dark green waters drowned. And staring at the magic with eyes adream, That never till now have looked upon the sea, Boys from the Middle-West lounge listlessly In the unlanterned darkness, boys who go Beckoned by some unchallengeable gleam To unknown lands to fight an unknown foe. | 2 The Conscript | Indifferent, flippant, earnest, but all bored, The doctors sit in the glare of electric light Watching the endless stream of naked white Bodies of men for whom their hasty award Means life or death, maybe, or the living death Of mangled limbs, blind eyes or darkened brain: And the chairman, as his monocle falls again, Pronounces each doom with easy, indifferent breath. Then suddenly they all shudder as they see A young man move before them wearily, Pallid and gaunt as one already dead; And they are strangely troubled as he stands With arms outstretched and drooping, thorn-crowned head, The nail-marks glowing in his feet and hands. | 3 Air-Raid | Night shatters in mid-heaven: the bark of guns, The roar of planes, the crash of bombs, and all The unshackled skiey pandemonium stuns The senses to indifference, when a fall Of masonry near by startles awake, Tingling wide-eyed, prick-eared, with bristling hair, Each sense within the body crouched aware Like some sore-hunted creature in the brake. Yet side by side we lie in the little room, Just touching hands, with eyes and ears that strain Keenly, yet dream-bewildered, through tense gloom, Listening in helpless stupor of insane Drugged nightmare panic fantastically wild, To the quiet breathing of our sleeping child. | 4 In War-Time | As gaudy flies across a pewter plate, On the grey disk of the unrippling sea, Beneath an airless, sullen sky of slate Dazzled destroyers zig-zag restlessly, While underneath the sleek and livid tide, Blind monsters nosing through the soundless deep, Lean submarines among blind fishes glide And through primeval weedy forests sweep. Over the hot grey surface of my mind Glib, motley rumours zig-zag without rest, While deep within the darkness of my breast Monstrous desires, lean, sinister and blind, Slink through unsounded night and stir the slime And ooze of oceans of forgotten time. | 5 Ragtime | A minx in khaki struts the limelit boards: With false moustache, set smirk and ogling eyes And straddling legs and swinging hips she tries To swagger it like a soldier, while the chords Of rampant ragtime jangle, clash, and clatter; And over the brassy blare and drumming din She strains to squirt her squeaky notes and thin Spirtle of sniggering lascivious patter. Then out into the jostling Strand I turn, And down a dark lane to the quiet river, One stream of silver under the full moon, And think of how cold searchlights flare and burn Over dank trenches where men crouch and shiver. Humming, to keep their hearts up, that same tune. | 6 Leave | Crouched on the crowded deck, we watch the sun In naked gold leap out of a cold sea Of shivering silver; and stretching drowsily Crampt legs and arms, relieved that night is done And the slinking, deep-sea peril past, we turn Westward to see the chilly, sparkling light Quicken the Wicklow Hills, till jewel-bright In their Spring freshness of dewy green they burn. And silent on the deck beside me stands A soldier, lean and brown, with restless hands, And eyes that stare unkindling on the life And rapture of green hills and glistening morn: He comes from Flanders home to his dead wife, And I, from England, to my son newborn. | 7 Bacchanal (November, 1918) | Into the twilight of Trafalgar Square They pour from every quarter, banging drums And tootling penny trumpets: to a blare Of tin mouth-organs, while a sailor strums A solitary banjo, lads and girls, Locked in embraces, in a wild dishevel Of flags and streaming hair, with curdling skirls Surge in a frenzied, reeling, panic revel. Lads who so long have looked death in the face, Girls who so long have tended death's machines, Released from the long terror shriek and prance: And watching them, I see the outrageous dance, The frantic torches and the tambourines Tumultuous on the midnight hills of Thrace. | Contents / Contents, p. 2
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