Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 108: VIII

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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.

VIII

It is not for art’s sake this precious dower

Of speech must be renewed, but for the sake

Of life within. The expression doth not break

Silence in vain, but with reflexive power

To vitalize its source, and parting shower

New riches on the donor. Thus we take

Life’s counterthrust upon our souls, and shake

The vessel, lest by standing Being sour.

All life’s a language; but ’tis not enough

To launch forth with it wildly into space,

Adding one atom to the blinding drain,

A pitiable froth-bell in the trough

Of each new cause, wherein the striving race

Tries issue with stern time—perchance in vain.

Hesepe, 20th June