Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 134: XVI

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.

XVI

Soul of an empire that hath far outrun

Thy purpose, England! thou who in the shade

Of thy maturing years thyself had’st laid

To rest amongst thy flocks—and lo! the sun

Set never more upon thee! One by one

The nations place them at those feet which strayed

Into the Innermost, where worlds are made,

And bless the Mother saw their race begun.

England, it must be that thou hast been sent

Some quest beyond thy vision to fulfil;

That, Mother of the Mighty, thou art meant

To be the Organ of a Mightier still;

And, while the final End we may not see,

We feel ’tis holier than or they or thee.

Hesepe, 14th July