Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 45: HESEPE

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.

HESEPE

I

A lonely camp and small amidst the miles

Of the Westphalian plain, where islanded

In the green waste our simple lives are led

Out of the troubled world. Here morning smiles

Splendidly, and the mustering twilight wiles

To a strange sense of peace consummated

Over these low-hung woods, where setting red

And oval the sun the yearning eye beguiles.

Then as the white and sheeted vapour steals

Along the flats lagoon-like, comes a breath

Of anguish from the void, where still is hurled

Nation on nation; and the spirit feels

A tidal presence of o’erwhelming death

Stir through this weird backwater of the world.

Hesepe, 19th May