The Hospital Visitor - Alys Fane Trotter

When yesterday I went to see friends – 
(Watching their patient faces in a row
I want to give each boy a D.S.O.)
When yesterday I went to see my friends
With cigarettes and foolish odds and ends,
(Knowing they understand how well I know
That nothing I can do will make amends,
But that I must not grieve, or tell them so),
A pale-faced Iniskilling, just eighteen,
Who’d fought two years, with eyes a little dim
Smiled up and showed me, there behind the screen
On the humped bandage that replaced a limb,
How someone left him, where the leg had been
A tiny green glass pig to comfort him.

Here are men who’ve learned to laugh at pain.
And if their lips have quivered when they spoke,
They’ve said brave words, or tried to make a joke,
Said it’s not worse than trenches in the rain,
Or pools of water on a chalky plain,
Or bitter cold from which you stiffly woke,
Or deep wet mud that left you hardly sane,
Or the tense wait for ‘Fritz’s master stroke’.
You seldom hear then talk of their ‘bad luck’.
And suffering has not spoiled their ready wit,
And oh! You’d hardly doubt their fighting pluck
When each new generation shows their grit,
Who never brag of blows for England struck,
But only yearn to ‘ get about a bit’.

Alys Fane Trotter

Poem Untitled - Iris Tree

And afterwards, when honour has made good,
And all you think you fight for shall take place,
A late rejoicing to a crippled race;
The bulldog’s teeth relax and snap for food,
The eagles fly to their forsaken brood,
Within the ravaged nest. When no disgrace
Shall spread a blush across the haggard face
Of anxious Pride, already flushed with blood.

In victory will you have conquered Hate,
And stuck old Folly with a bayonet
And battered down the hideous prison gate?
Or will the fatted gods be gloried yet,
Glutted with gold and dust and empty state.
The incense of our anguish and our sweat?

Iris Tree

Poem Untitled - Iris Tree

Of all who died in silence far away
Where sympathy was busy with other things,
Busy with words, inventing how to slay,
Troubled with rights and wrongs and governments and kings.

The little dead who knew so large a love,
Whose lives were sweet unto themselves a shepherding
Of hopes, ambitions, wonders in a drove
Over the hills of time, that now are graves for burying.

Of all the tenderness that flowed to them,
A milky way streaming from out their mother’s breast,
Stars were they to her night, ans she the stem
From which they flowered – now barren and left unblessed.

Of all the sparkling kisses that they gave
Spangling a secret radiance on adoring hands,
Now stifled in the darkness of a grave
With kiss of loneliness and death’s embracing bands.

No more!-And we, the mourners, dare not wear
The black that folds our hearts in secrecy if pain,
But must don purple and bright standards bear,
Vermillion of our honour, a bloody train.

We dare not weep who must be brave in battle-
‘Another death – another day – another inch of land –
The dead are cheering and the ghost drums rattle’....
The deaf are dumb and the dumb cannot understand....

Of all who died in darkness far away
Nothing is left of them but LOVE, who triumphs now,
His arms held crosswise to the budding day,
The passion-red roses clustering his brow.

Iris Tree

A Letter from Ealing Broadway Station - Aelfrida Catharine Wetenhall Tillyard

‘Night. Fog. Tall through the murky gloom
The coloured lights of signals loom,
And underneath my boot I feel
The long recumbent lines of steel.
As up and down the beat I tramp
My face and hair are wet with damp;
My hands are cold – but that’s a trifle –
And I must mind the sentry’s rifle.
‘Twould be a foolish way to die,
Mistaken for a German spy!
Hardest of all is jsut to keep
Open my eyelids drugged with sleep.
Stand back! With loud metallic crash
And lighted windows all a-flash
The train to Bristol past me booms.

I wonder who has got my rooms!
I like to think that Frank is there,
An d Willie in the basket-chair,
While Ernest, with his guileless looks,
Is making havoc in my books.
The smoke-rings rise, and we discuss
Friendship, and What Life Means To Us,
What is it that the kitchens lack,
And where we’ll take our tramp next vac.

Those girls at Newham whom I taught
I’ll spare them each a friendly thought....

An hour to dawn! I’d better keep
Moving, or I shall fall asleep.

I’ve had before my eyes these days
The fires of Antwerp all ablaze.
(The startled women scream and weep;
Only the dead have time to sleep.)
I’d like to feel that I was helping
To send the German curs a-yelping.
Well, if i serve the Belgian nation
By guarding Ealing Broadway station,
I’ll guard it gladly, never fear

Sister, good-night; the dawn is here’

Aelfrida Catharine Wetenhall Tillyard

Invitation Au Festin - Aelfrida Catharine Wetenhall Tillyard

Oh come and live with me, my love,
And share my war-time dinner,
Who eats the least at this our feast,
Shall make John Bull the winner.

Here is a plate of cabbage soup,
With caterpillars in,
How good they taste! (Avoid all waste,
If you the war would win.)

Now, will you have a minnow, love,
Or half an inch of eel?
A stickleback, a slice of jack,
Shall grace our festive meal.

We’ve no unpatriotic joints,
No sugar and no bread,
East nothing sweet, no rolls, no meat,
The Food controller said.

But would you like some sparrow pie,
To counteract the eel?
A slice of swede is what you need,
And please don’t leave the peel.

But there’s dessert for you, my love,
Some glucose stewed with sloes,
And now good-night – your dreams be bright!
(Perhaps they will – who knows?)

Aelfrida Catharine Wetenhall Tillyard

In Time of War - Lesbia Thanet

In time of war
I dreamed (God pity babes at play)
How I should love past all romance,
And how to him beloved should say,
As heroes’ women say, perchance,
When the deep drums awake –
‘Go forth: do gloriously for my dear sake.’

But now I render, blind with fear
No lover made of dreams, but You
O You – so commonplace, so dear,
So knit with all I am and do!
Now, braver thought I lack:
Only God bring you back – God bring you back!

Lesbia Thanet

Spring in War-Time - Sarah Teasdale

I feel the spring far off, far off,
    The faint, far scent of bud and leaf --
Oh, how can spring take heart to come
    To a world in grief,
    Deep grief?

The sun turns north, the days grow long,
    Later the evening star grows bright --
How can the daylight linger on
    For men to fight,
    Still fight?

The grass is waking in the ground,
    Soon it will rise and blow in waves --
How can it have the heart to sway
    Over the graves,
    New graves?

Under the boughs where lovers walked
    The apple-blooms will shed their breath --
But what of all the lovers now
    Parted by Death,
    Grey Death?

Sarah Teasdale

One Night - Millicent Sutherland

I walked into a moon of gold last night
Across grey sands she seemed to shine so bright.

Wide, wide the sands until I met the sea,
Cradle of moons, yet searchlights followed me.

I asked the moon if creeping round the Zones
She had seen good, or only poor things' bones.

"Pale faces I have seen, unconscious men
Bereft of struggling horror now and then.

"And sinking ships I see, and floating mines,
And cries I hear, 'O God,' and choking whines.

"But later when the stars shine on the wave
And give more light, I know the dead die brave.

"Passing so quickly from the things that count,
Count to all mortal thoughts, to find the Fount,

"Where angels pour elixir into bowls,
Drink, not for broken hearts, but thirsty souls."

"And what on shore?" I asked, "the great Divide
Where rivers run, and trenches side by side?"

"There," the moon said, "the snow was on the ground
And the frost pinched me as I beamed around.

"Red pools of gore, and ghastly shadows lay
In deep dug corners, so I sank away.

"Let misty cloudlets sweep across my face
To hide the earth, and give me heart of grace.

"Sudden the air seemed filled with eager breath
Of great Adventurers, released from death,

"And shaking blood from out their eyes and hair
Shouting for further knowledge here and there.

"I lighted these across the treacherous Path
To reach the garden of Life's aftermath.

"And as they sped in troops the great guns boomed,
With flashes lightning swift, and dark hordes loomed,

"And phantom shapes of patient warrior bands --
Then more snow fell and shrouded all the lands."

Now pondering from the moon I turned again,
Over the sands, back to our House of Pain.

Millicent Sutherland