Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 33: 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

—The deep woe of the mind when prison walls

First darken it with shadow, throbbing hot

To meet the outrage, as the bolts are shot,

The locks ground home, and the long silence falls.

And next a settling helplessness appals

The sinking soul, as if that hour should blot

One’s name out of the Book, as if one caught

Of life’s retreat the hurrying last footfalls.

Where once a vision smiled of rankèd days

Drawn on life’s vista’d curtain rich and vast,

Only a gulf now yawns. Of all the plays

Played out in visions, we have played the last.

The future bankrupt, ’tis the present pays;

And of life’s triple span, remains—the Past.

Rastatt, 5th May