Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 114: I

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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.

I

My hundredth sonnet! Here I pause to brood

A little by myself upon the theme

Ere once again with the meandering stream

Of my own thoughts I move. And it were good

To give thanks for the labour that hath stood

Between my soul and madness, like a gleam

Of sunlight in the darkness of the dream

Which passes over me, else scarce withstood.

Wonderful is it how the heart o’erwrought

Unloads in song, life’s passionate rebound

’Gainst agonies whose barb alone hath brought

This bird of sorrows fluttering to the ground,

And with these wild and wandering flowers of thought

The portion of a prisoner metely crowned.

Hesepe, 23rd June