Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 103: III

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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.

III

None than thyself more royally to-day

Hath given to England in her hour of need.

In every field where England’s children bleed

Thine own have there more richly bled than they.

And Oxford still incarnadines the clay

To such a sanctity as doth o’erplead

The voice of censure, silenced by the deed

Of the great heart that laid them where they lay.

’Tis their’s, that murmur fluttering from the marge

Of thither Acheron, where their cares they ply

In deathless death: “O Mother mine, enlarge

Thy life to England’s. Thou hast learned to die.

But while thy life thou dost so grandly give,

One thing thou lackest, Oxford: learn to live!”

Hesepe, 8th June