Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 126: 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

Let every child of England every day,

While o’er the world these battle-thunders roll,

Enter into the silence of his soul,

And there communing with his conscience say:

“I am a child of England, and I pray

That with a single eye and one fixed goal,

Thou grant me, God, to give my being whole

To England in her hour of agony.

Chasten me to the greatness of my fate;

And, self-divided, make me one again,

That, as to this last rally congregate

The last stern remnants of my countrymen,

Thou may’st behold Thy England move as one,

Swift, final, justified of every son.”

Hesepe, 2nd July