Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 123: V

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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.

V

Forget it, England, that this Tempest finds

Thy life at home with troubles overrun,

Issues unsettled, justice to be done,

And dark distrust corrupting all men’s minds.

Trust England, all her sons. Her millstone grinds

Slowly perchance; but while in heaven the sun

Endureth, while their rounds the planets run,

Her word is bond, and what she binds she binds.

And England, see thou that these debts are paid!

Be firmly true to thine own children. Stand

For justice. Let these arms aside be laid.

And in our dear inviolable land

None but thyself go armed—the only blade

Out of its sheath, that flashing in thy hand.

Hesepe, 28th June