Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 39: V

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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.

V

O May! O month of months divinely dear,

Which severest, amidst the toil and strife

Of Nature’s round, as with a glittering knife,

A perfect segment from the varying year!

Month of entrancing spaces, wide and clear,

Calling us to the open, thick with life,

All leaf and lamb and freshness, welling, rife

With blossom—can it be that thou art here?

O that it were in some sweet Scottish strath,

Backed by the mountains, watered, green and wide,

Where the Tay laves in shallow crystal bath

His pebbles, or the Forth’s meandering tide

Receives Dumyat’s shadow o’er his path,

And young light breaks down Ochill’s mottled side.

Rastatt, 8th May