Soon after hostilities ceased, relatives and survivors began to make pilgrimages to France, to search for the graves of those who had died and to retread the old battlefields. There were suggestions that parts of the front – in particular the town of Ypres – should remain as they were to form permanent shrines to the fallen and as a reminder of the destruction wrought by war, but local people did not agree. Gradually their towns and villages were rebuilt, and normal life began to return to the devastated countryside.
The Battle-fields
You never saw the Summer dance and sing
And wreathe her steps with laughter, toss her larks,
And strew her crimson poppies, and make rise
Across the meadows in her train a cry
Of happy colors – O, you never knew
How birds can make a business of their singing,
How the golden music can rain down
From sunny heaven like a hail-storm all
Day long – you never saw the naked life
Of Summer, till you saw her in her wrath
And gladness, young-eyed, golden-irised, loud
And wild and lovely-drunken, running, prancing,
Clambering across these fields of death.
Old pits and craters where the solid earth
Rocked up and smoked like water are the beds
Of blowing lilies; huge, dull-yellowing piles
Of steel, the dead-ends of the work of death,
Are choirs for thrushes and gay trellises
For rose and morning-glory; and you see
The tissue petals trailing down the holes
Men huddled in to die like poisoned rats.
You see black, crazy strings of barbed-wire fences
Legging down the hillside like old men
Amuck, tripped up and clambered on and loved
Down into earth by mountains of wild-grape
And ivy. And you see vast obscene tanks,
Gigantic bugs without antennæ, bugs
Named Lottie and named Liesel, cracked and blasted,
Pouring out their iron guts among
The daisies, and you see the daisies laugh;
And long-tailed pies that fly like aeroplanes
Float from their turrets, gentle in the blue.
Whole cities were sown in this earth like seed.
The wealth and eagerness of all mankind
Was here, like mountain thunder, coursing through
These ghostly paths, that hie so privately
Beneath the glossy crowds of bee-loved clover.
They were here for murder, death-determined.
But the shepherd trails his willing sheep
To crop that clover; and the clicking hoe
And sliding shovel talk as surely forth
As crickets when a summer storm is past.
These villages, close-nesting like the hives
Of bees, were crushed to blood and powder by
The speeding hoof of war. Their temples fallen
And their homes a pit for gravel, they,
The many neighbours, are a lonely few
Lost pioneers. But they had pitched their tents
And tacked their paper shanties in the desert,
And the hens are clucking, and the beans
Are blossoming with white and brick-red blossoms,
And the vine, the purple clematis,
Is royal at the door. On holidays
They lay their tools down, and with sunny wine
From the old cellar-pits, and kindling mirth
From depths incredible, they eat their bread
In laughter, they fling jokes at the old war,
And pour soup in the bugle, and sing loud,
And pound the drum, and call out all the girls,
And march, and dance, and fill the darkened streets
With love and music till the moon goes out.
In all death’s garden but one plot is dead,
One cold, bleak acre swept-up for our tears,
The turf, the pebbles, regular and still –
The tired, white little crosses marking time!
But they are feeble, and their watch is brief.
To-day remembering a name, to-morrow
They will mourn the death of memory;
Another morrow they are gone; time’s wind
Has blown the sweet-briar roses over them.
Earth does not mind the madness of her children –
She has room. From one gaunt womb she could
Pour back those cities, and fill all these fields
With men and women aching at their toil,
And droll-faced children trudging with a pail
To greet them. This raw miracle of life
Is ruthless, reckless, sure. Plunge in your hands
To fashion it; be ruthless, reckless, sure.
Fear is the only danger. And the death
Of dreams dreamed weakly is the only death
Of man – the prayers sighed outward from the earth,
The songs that feed the poet with his wish,
Beatitudes tramped under armies, thoughts
Too mother-tender, or too childly wise,
To stand out in the weather of the world,
And deeds untimely kind, and deed-like words
Of Love’s apostles, who would pilgrim down
The black volcanic valley of all time
With hymns and waving palms, their sweet white banners
Lost and perishing, like breath of brooks,
Like strings of thin mist when the mountains burn.
In them man’s spirit in its power dies.
The rest is Nature’s life – and she will live,
And laugh on dancing to the doomless future,
Slave to no thought softer than her own.
Max Eastman
The Menin Road, March 1919
Over the flat dim land I see you moving
Methodically; under a dark wide sky
Full of low clouds. You are gone far from our loving.
No fret of ours or grief can touch you now.
The road speaks nothing to our longing now.
The winds are dumb to us and pass us by.
The nameless tracks, the faded grass
Spread out as far as we can see.
The homeless shadows glance and pass
By shattered wood and naked tree.
Splintered and stark they rise alone
Against so wonderful a blue
Of distance – an intensity
At once so steadfast and so true
I wonder are you wholly gone?
Carola Oman
The Wood
I fear this beautiful, unholy place!
But O, what frights me among elder-boughs
June-blossoming: wild roses? Evil’s here.
But how is evil here? What evil comes
Out of June meadows into the wood’s calm?
Is it with Earth the wrong lies? Or with me?
Did elders bloom like this, on a wood’s edge,
Close to pale foxgloves, neighbored with a briar,
When, long ago – how long I know not – hate,
First fear, or first injustice, bred in me?
Is this hid horror here, hid Memory?
J.C. Chadwick
Behind the Line
Treasure not so the forlorn days
When dun clouds flooded the naked plains
With foul, remorseless rains;
Thread not those memory ways
Where by the dripping alien farms,
Starved orchards with their shrivelled arms,
The bitter mouldering wind would whine
At the brisk mules clattering towards the Line.
Remember not with so sharp skill
Each chasm in the clouds that with strange fire
Lit pyramid-fosse and spire
Miles on miles from our hill;
In the magic glass
, aye, then their lure
Like heaven’s houses gleaming pure
Might soothe the long-imprisoned sight
And put the seething storm to flight.
Enact not you so like a wheel
The round of evenings in sandbagged rooms
Where candles flicked the glooms;
The jests old time could steal
From ugly destiny, on whose brink
The poor fools grappled fear with drink,
And snubbed the hungry, raving guns
With endless tunes on gramophones.
About you spreads the world anew,
The old fields all for your sense rejoice,
Music has found her ancient voice,
From the hills there’s heaven on earth to view;
And kindly Mirth will raise his glass
To bid you with dull Care go pass –
And still you wander muttering on
Over the shades of shadows gone.
Somewhere in France (2)
‘Somewhere in France’ – we know not where – he lies,
’Mid shuddering earth and under anguished skies!
We may not visit him, but this we say:
Though our steps err, his shall not miss their way.
From the exhaustion of War’s fierce embrace
He, nothing doubting, went to his own place.
To him has come, if not the crown and palm,
The kiss of Peace – a vast, sufficing calm!
So fine a spirit, daring, yet serene, –
He may not, surely, lapse from what has been:
Greater, not less, his wondering mind must be;
Ampler the splendid vision he must see.
’Tis unbelievable he fades away, –
An exhalation at the dawn of day!
Nor dare we deem that he has but returned
Into the Oversoul, to be discerned
Hereafter in the bosom of the rose,
In petal of the lily, or in those
Far jewelled sunset skies that glow and pale,
Or in the rich note of the nightingale.
Nay, though all beauty may recall to mind
What we in his fair life were wont to find,
In sun his nature, and in morn his fire,
In sea his force, in love his pure desire;
He shall escape absorption, and shall still
Preserve a faculty to know and will.
Such is my hope, slow climbing to a faith:
(We know not Life, how should we then know Death?)
From our small limits, and withholdings free,
Somewhere he dwells and keeps high company;
Yet tainted not with so supreme a bliss
As to forget he knew a world like this.
John Hogben
At Thiepval
Oh, nevermore shall a bud awake
On your tortured boughs at the call of Spring,
But for your sake
New life shall break
From the seeds that Victory shall fling
In earth of the soldier’s slumbering.
For a hopeful Spring shall come at last,
A summer of sunlight sweet and pure,
When the fiery blast
With its blight’s o’er past,
And the shade of the green young trees shall lure
The heirs of peace to a rest secure.
But ye shall stand as witnesses
Of the fight with a rude invading foe,
Of its fiery stress
And blood-bitterness,
Meet testament of the brave below
Who died for the peace the young trees know.
J. E. Stewart
A Father at the Grave of his Son
Steady, heart, for here’s my journey’s end – earth’s end, for me
And this the door which closes once, and opens never –
These few unsodden clods of clay,
A shelter and a shade
To him who was, and is, my son.
To me a grave, to him the rainbow’s end.
Though Death make cowards of the living,
They know him not, the dead.
He the arrow, I the bow
Which launched his flight towards infinity.
That form of willow,
Those eyes more eager than the dawn,
With all their freshness and surprise!
To him was duty pleasure, pleasure joy,
And joy was gratitude.
And with him many parts I’ve played,
A perch for childhood clinging,
His boyhood’s anchor, in youth a shield,
And to his manhood’s dawn
An answering call.
And now am I an echo stilled,
A silent bell, a wave without a shore.
In him died out my name and line,
Ancestry’s sum of heritage
Back to the rim of Time.
And now he has the whole Picardian plain for a grave,
A fitting place to die
Where man has died for man,
To dream, to rest, and greet the morn.
A treader of the skies,
With brother falcons of the shield,
He made new worlds his own,
Soared beyond the condor’s ken,
And shamed the eagle’s flight.
He fought not treacherous foes on earth,
But in his venture toward the sun,
Met those for once ennobled by their deeds,
Who challenged, fought or fell, or died with him.
He knew not death, for as he fell,
He loosed from him that body which had served its day,
As wakes a sleeper from his dreams
And lays his cloak aside.
Then, eager went as eager came,
A light to heavens new,
A banneret of valour ’gainst the setting sun.
And he has missed the heartache,
Life’s jealousies and pain, and sympathies deceived.
Away then, Sorrow, beguiling sister of Despair,
I’ll rest awhile with Sadness
In her twilight hour of balm,
And let grief’s embers die.
For I’ve a treasury of memories so rich and dear
’Twould beggar all the son-less men of earth to buy!
Since memory’s but the bridge of time,
I’ll build it true and high,
To carry me across the skies
When comes my journey far,
And never fear but I’ll know well
Where waits my boy for me –
At the rainbow’s western end!
France, September 1919
Wade Chance
Soldiers’ headstones
L/20675 Private Alfred James Clark
1st Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent Regiment)
9 October 1915 Age 18
FAREWELL BELOVED SO YOUNG AND BRAVE
FOR KING AND COUNTRY HIS LIFE HE GAVE
Carnoy Military Cemetery, Somme H.3
847 Private A. G. Whittle
11th Bttn Australian Infantry
2 May 1915 Age 28
TOO FAR AWAY YOUR GRAVE TO SEE
BUT NOT TOO FAR TO THINK OF THEE
Lone Pine Cemetery, Anzac I.G.1
2167 Private Clifford Lionel Holton
5th Bttn Australian Infantry
13 August 1915 Age 19
AN ANZAC BRAVE
IN AN ANZAC GRAVE
Lone Pine Cemetery, Anzac III B.54
476 Private William Norman Arthur-Mason
19th Bttn Australian Infantry
19 September 1915 Age 19
HE DID HIS DUTY SIMPLY, BRAVELY
AND IN THE DOING DIED
Shrapnel Valley Cemetery I, Anzac F.8
Perfect Epilogue
Armistice Day 1933
It’s whe
n the leaves are fallen I think of you,
And the long boulevards where the ghosts walk now,
And Paris is dark again save for one great star
That’s caught and held in the dark arms of a bough
And wonder, among them are two a girl and boy
Silent, because their love was greater than song,
Who whisper ‘farewell’ and whisper ‘if it’s for ever’;
And did not know, poor ghosts, for ever could be so long.
It’s when the leaves are fallen I think of you,
And if you’re lonely too, who went with the great host;
And know that Time’s no mender of hearts but only
Still the divider of Light and Darkness, Ghost.
May Cannan
Valete
This is a tale not relished by our time,
Soft with the thing that men call Victory.
You will not hear it round the midnight floor,
But only in the quiet, evening lane,
Or by the hearths of those that once were young
And stoop to feel the warmth of ashening fires,
Forgetting and remembering again.
They whisper that a thousand years ago,
A thousand years – unless this night just gone –
There was a road between the poplar trees
Long sleepless from the tramp of soldiery.
And as they marched, why! everybody sang
His dearest tunes, and, strangely, all of these
Together mingling, though in many a tongue,
Turned to an anthem, rapturous and free.
And this is true – that as their number passed,
Suddenly there was no more singing:
Only the silence, racked by crunching feet;
The level throb of drums, and worn studs ringing.
No emblem fluttered, not a hand was kissed,
And we that saw them found no word to say,
But stood there till the marching ebbed and died,
And all that distant company became