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Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 102: II
By Archibald Allan Bowman
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About This Book

A sequence of sonnets composed by a soldier in enemy captivity during the First World War, recording frontline violence, the suddenness of bombardment, marches and captures, the strain of waiting and the loss of comrades, and the solace found in memory and poetic labour. Many poems juxtapose immediate scenes—exploding shrapnel, crowded billets, marches, and internment camps—with reveries of homeland landscapes and classical or moral reflections. Sections move between field incidents, the nadir of imprisonment, thoughts of home and influences, and short epigrams or maxims, showing how verse acted as a mental bulwark against despair while exploring themes of fate, endurance, and the persistence of inner freedom.

II

Yet, Oxford, it is better thou should’st know
That eyes which love thee in thy culture see
The withering curse of long sterility.
Rooted in England, thou hast ceased to grow
Together with her growth. Thy waters flow
Not with her broadening current to the sea,
But murmuring their delicious melody
They wander forth and wist not where they go.
And thus thy fine-edged spirit, which in high
Disdain hath never paltered with the pelf
Of modern rapine, doth too often fly
To endless crochets, wayward as an elf,
Self-humouring and posturing and shy,
And broods apart and lives unto itself.⁠[2]

Hesepe, 8th June

[2] It is hoped that it may not be thought too much of a liberty in an outsider to criticize anything so esoteric as the Oxford culture; but if so I should reply that it is just this esoteric quality which I wish to criticize. Admiration for Oxford and love of England alike compel me to deplore the fact that so typical a product of our national life should be so little representative.