Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 107: VII

Open in WeRead

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.

VII

One thing must be thine instant, anxious care,

Which on thine honour thou dar’st not refuse.

Long time our people now the habit lose

Of speech consecutive (which man should wear

Upon him like a garment, fit and fair)

And through some faulting of the brain abuse

Thought’s flowing vesture of a thousand hues,

Oft shorn to shreds, all fluttering in the air.

I mark and grieve; for in this lost control

We trace the weakness of these breathless times,

When man no longer keeps his nature whole,

Nor governs his spirit; and it chimes

With the unruly in us, deadliest threat

Our English liberty hath fronted yet.

Hesepe, 17th June