Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 49: IV

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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.

IV

When in this deep Re-entrant’s sullen shade,

What hour night’s middle watches change reliefs,

The mind compiles the roster of its griefs,

Before the inward eye there oft parade

Life’s serried loves, appointed and arrayed

For high inspection, potentates and chiefs,

And armed retainers whom some bond enfeoffs,

And all precisely marshalled grade by grade.

Then we discern at length where each doth stand,

In front or rear, and what the rank they bear;

The acquainted Mass, the Intimates, the band

Of such as do the forward stations share.

And last the One with none on either hand.

And thou art She, whose ring and seal I wear.

Hesepe, 4th June