Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 32: VII

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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.

VII

The last march opened with the sudden blaze

Of howitzers upon the face of night,

Waving us onward ere the laggard light

Of morning broke down transport-crowded ways.

Next to the first was this the bitterest phase

Of our humiliation. Yet ’tis right

To chronicle some kindness, and requite

Our armed custodians with this word of praise.

By Fournes, by Haubourdin, the endless reel

Of marching men ran out its windings slow,

Till near day’s end, nigh broken on the wheel

Of hunger, and scarce longer fit to go,

Within the moated Citadel of Lille

The sharper pang gave place to deeper woe.

Rastatt, 5th May