Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 132: XIV

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.

XIV

And in that spirit interpenetrate

The numberless appealing strains that bring

The look of England into everything

That she hath looked on till the night grew late;

Where, as amongst the four gray seas she sate,

And mused upon it, she hath felt the ring

That bound her to her narrow island spring,

And something passed, and passing made her great.

And Empire mustered round her. Ere she knew

Her state, her hour was on her once again.

Herseemed that something winged from her flew.

Herseemed as though the feet of marching men

Bore past her to a music never mute

While England proudly takes that proud salute.

Hesepe, 12th July