12.06.2008, 11:46
On the March
I
Never wound cortège more exceeding slow,
Nor mourners to more melancholy tones,
Than that wan wending, musicked by the moans
Of wounded men, whom pity bade us show
That much of tenderness. Nor friend nor foe
Spoke in the heavy language of these groans,
But stark mankind, whose utter anguish owns
A common nature, in a common woe.
Full many a mile of weary footing sore,
By miry side tracks, not unkindly led;
And each unwounded man his burden bore
On stretcher or in blanket, ransacked bed,
Duck-board uprooted, hand-cart, unhinged door.
We left behind the dying and the dead.
II
Hour followed hour, and slowly on the wound,
Till wan day turned to front the gradual west;
And with day's waning waned the dream of rest
For the worn bearers, whom the twilight found
Voyaging no-man's grey, wide-watered ground,
Their shoulders bowed and aching backs distressed;
Isthmused between deep pools, and sorely pressed
To foot the flanks of many a slippery mound;
While floundering convoys, till the light was gone,
Across the perilous space their drivers nurse,
Limber and gun, by frighted horses drawn,
Whose plunging swerve that bogged their burdens worse,
Provoked Teutonic fury, well laid on
With sounding whipcord and sonorous curse.
III
And darkness fell, and a great void of space,
As if to bar our further going on,
Unfeatured, huge, gloomed o'er us. No light shone.
Strenght, too, scarce held sufficient now to trace
The squalid reaches of this dismal place;
And silence settled near and far upon
That vacancy at length - our last guide gone.
Night hid each from his comrade, face from face.
As is a voyage through the uncharted waste
Of seas, unpiloted by any star,
Alone, unmooned, uncomforted, unplanned;
So forward still in silent pain we paced,
Nor light of moon nor pharos gleamed from far
Across the boding gloom of that lost land.
IV
We came to Aubers at the dead of night,
And found the semblance of that circled hell,
Which Dante once, damnation's pains to tell,
Paced out in darkness, agony and fright.
In that blank lazarette no kindly light
On bending form of nurse or surgeon fell,
But darkness and barred doors proclaimed too well
The piteous end of long-endured plight.
No room was there in stable or in stall,
Nor roof to shelter cattle while they eat,
Where wounded men could shelter from the blight
Of the foul dew that drizzling covered all.
But in the open and the squelching street
We left them to endure the drenching night.
V
There is a garden where the whispering breeze
Perchance has wooed the lilacs in the spring,
Where still perchance at dawn a few birds sing,
And love goes nesting in the willow-trees.
But night's ear now caught other sounds than these,
And darkness, bending, shrouded with his wing
What from an iceberg scalding tears might wring,
The glowing core of any furnace freeze.
Thick as the crimsoned leaves of autumn fall,
And crimsoned, too, and torn, and crushed as they
('Twas the wet hand that told it) over all,
Moaning and writing in their pain they lay;
And none to turn their faces to the wall,
And none to close their eyes, and none to pray.
VI
So where the wide and shallow beaches bound
The ceaseless moiling of the North Sea hoar,
And on the sands the rounding billows pour
Their majesty of waters to the ground;
As one by one the rising breakers pound
The beaten salt sands of the yeasty shore,
Their bursting charges' momentary roar
Dies in a background of prevailing sound -
Thus hour by hour the moaning did prevail
Over night's stillness, rose, and swelled, and died
In the sad level of a murmuring wail,
Like ocean's moan with voices multiplied
Along the reaches of the sounding graile,
The west wind wrestling with the flowing tide.
VII
The last march opened with the sudden blaze
Of howitzers upon the face of night,
Waving us onward ere the laggard light
Of morning broke down transport-crowded ways.
Next to the first was this the bitterest phase
Of our humiliation. Yet 'tis right
To chronicle some kindness, and requite
Our armed custodians with this word of praise.
By Fournes, by Haubourdin, the endless reel
Of marching men ran out its winding slow,
Till near day's end, nigh broken on the wheel
Of hunger, and scarce longer fit to go,
Within the moated Citadel of Lille
The sharper pang gave place to deeper woe.
VIII
- The deep woe of the mind when prison walls
First darken it with shadow, throbbing hot
To meet the outrage, as the bolts are shot,
The locks ground home, and the long silence falls.
And next a settling helplessness appals
The sinking soul, as if that hour should blot
One's name out of the Book, as if one caught
Of life's retreat the hurrying last footfalls.
Where once a vision smiled of rankèd days
Drawn on life's vista'd curtain rich and vast,
Only a gulf now yawns. Of all the plays
Played out in visions, we have played the last.
The future bankrupt, 'tis the present pays;
And of life's triple span, remains - the Past.
I
Never wound cortège more exceeding slow,
Nor mourners to more melancholy tones,
Than that wan wending, musicked by the moans
Of wounded men, whom pity bade us show
That much of tenderness. Nor friend nor foe
Spoke in the heavy language of these groans,
But stark mankind, whose utter anguish owns
A common nature, in a common woe.
Full many a mile of weary footing sore,
By miry side tracks, not unkindly led;
And each unwounded man his burden bore
On stretcher or in blanket, ransacked bed,
Duck-board uprooted, hand-cart, unhinged door.
We left behind the dying and the dead.
II
Hour followed hour, and slowly on the wound,
Till wan day turned to front the gradual west;
And with day's waning waned the dream of rest
For the worn bearers, whom the twilight found
Voyaging no-man's grey, wide-watered ground,
Their shoulders bowed and aching backs distressed;
Isthmused between deep pools, and sorely pressed
To foot the flanks of many a slippery mound;
While floundering convoys, till the light was gone,
Across the perilous space their drivers nurse,
Limber and gun, by frighted horses drawn,
Whose plunging swerve that bogged their burdens worse,
Provoked Teutonic fury, well laid on
With sounding whipcord and sonorous curse.
III
And darkness fell, and a great void of space,
As if to bar our further going on,
Unfeatured, huge, gloomed o'er us. No light shone.
Strenght, too, scarce held sufficient now to trace
The squalid reaches of this dismal place;
And silence settled near and far upon
That vacancy at length - our last guide gone.
Night hid each from his comrade, face from face.
As is a voyage through the uncharted waste
Of seas, unpiloted by any star,
Alone, unmooned, uncomforted, unplanned;
So forward still in silent pain we paced,
Nor light of moon nor pharos gleamed from far
Across the boding gloom of that lost land.
IV
We came to Aubers at the dead of night,
And found the semblance of that circled hell,
Which Dante once, damnation's pains to tell,
Paced out in darkness, agony and fright.
In that blank lazarette no kindly light
On bending form of nurse or surgeon fell,
But darkness and barred doors proclaimed too well
The piteous end of long-endured plight.
No room was there in stable or in stall,
Nor roof to shelter cattle while they eat,
Where wounded men could shelter from the blight
Of the foul dew that drizzling covered all.
But in the open and the squelching street
We left them to endure the drenching night.
V
There is a garden where the whispering breeze
Perchance has wooed the lilacs in the spring,
Where still perchance at dawn a few birds sing,
And love goes nesting in the willow-trees.
But night's ear now caught other sounds than these,
And darkness, bending, shrouded with his wing
What from an iceberg scalding tears might wring,
The glowing core of any furnace freeze.
Thick as the crimsoned leaves of autumn fall,
And crimsoned, too, and torn, and crushed as they
('Twas the wet hand that told it) over all,
Moaning and writing in their pain they lay;
And none to turn their faces to the wall,
And none to close their eyes, and none to pray.
VI
So where the wide and shallow beaches bound
The ceaseless moiling of the North Sea hoar,
And on the sands the rounding billows pour
Their majesty of waters to the ground;
As one by one the rising breakers pound
The beaten salt sands of the yeasty shore,
Their bursting charges' momentary roar
Dies in a background of prevailing sound -
Thus hour by hour the moaning did prevail
Over night's stillness, rose, and swelled, and died
In the sad level of a murmuring wail,
Like ocean's moan with voices multiplied
Along the reaches of the sounding graile,
The west wind wrestling with the flowing tide.
VII
The last march opened with the sudden blaze
Of howitzers upon the face of night,
Waving us onward ere the laggard light
Of morning broke down transport-crowded ways.
Next to the first was this the bitterest phase
Of our humiliation. Yet 'tis right
To chronicle some kindness, and requite
Our armed custodians with this word of praise.
By Fournes, by Haubourdin, the endless reel
Of marching men ran out its winding slow,
Till near day's end, nigh broken on the wheel
Of hunger, and scarce longer fit to go,
Within the moated Citadel of Lille
The sharper pang gave place to deeper woe.
VIII
- The deep woe of the mind when prison walls
First darken it with shadow, throbbing hot
To meet the outrage, as the bolts are shot,
The locks ground home, and the long silence falls.
And next a settling helplessness appals
The sinking soul, as if that hour should blot
One's name out of the Book, as if one caught
Of life's retreat the hurrying last footfalls.
Where once a vision smiled of rankèd days
Drawn on life's vista'd curtain rich and vast,
Only a gulf now yawns. Of all the plays
Played out in visions, we have played the last.
The future bankrupt, 'tis the present pays;
And of life's triple span, remains - the Past.