Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 26: 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.

ON THE MARCH

I

Never wound cortège more exceeding slow,

Nor mourners to more melancholy tones,

Than that wan wending, musicked by the moans

Of wounded men, whom pity bade us show

That much of tenderness. Nor friend nor foe

Spoke in the heavy language of these groans,

But stark mankind, whose utter anguish owns

A common nature, in a common woe.

Full many a mile of weary footing sore,

By miry side tracks, not unkindly led;

And each unwounded man his burden bore

On stretcher or in blanket, ransacked bed,

Duck-board uprooted, hand-cart, unhinged door.

We left behind the dying and the dead.

Rastatt, 2nd May