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Gloucestershire Friends: Poems From a German Prison Camp cover

Gloucestershire Friends: Poems From a German Prison Camp

Chapter 44: 3. THE BOY WITH LITTLE BARE TOES
By F. W. Harvey
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Poetry

About This Book

A collection of short poems written by a soldier in captivity reflecting on home, memory, and the experience of imprisonment. The verse moves between intimate domestic images—mother, English gardens, county landscapes—and the hardships of internment, loneliness, and comradeship, often blending pastoral detail with wartime grief and wry humor. Forms vary from ballades and sonnets to rondel and villanelle, and recurring motifs include nature, loss, longing, and reflections on duty and sacrifice. Many pieces juxtapose the small joys of remembered rural life with the starkness of prison, producing restrained lyricism that balances tenderness, anger, and quiet faith.

3. THE BOY WITH LITTLE BARE TOES

He ran all down the meadow, that he did,
The boy with the little bare toes.
The flowers they smelt so sweet, so sweet,
And the grass it felt so funny and wet
And the birds sang just like this—“chereep!”
And the willow-trees stood in rows.
“Ho! ho!”
Laughed the boy with the little bare toes.
Now the trees had no insides—how funny!
Laughed the boy with the little bare toes.
And he put in his hand to find some money
Or honey—yes, that would be best—oh, best!
But what do you think he found, found, found?
Why, six little eggs all round, round, round,
And a mother-bird on the nest,
Oh, yes!
The mother-bird on her nest.
He laughed, “Ha! ha!” and he laughed, “He! he!”
The boy with the little bare toes.
But the little mother-bird got up from her place
And flew right into his face, ho! ho!
And pecked him on the nose, “Oh! oh!”
Yes, pecked him right on the nose.
“Boo! Boo!”
Cried the boy with the little bare toes.