Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 59: VI

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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.

VI

Day follows night, and night returns to day

Through all the enchanting stages of the spring;

And exile lengthens out to months that fling

Their shadow further, and my life grows gray;

Grays even with the sun’s increasing ray;

While forward still the heading heats do wing

Into the year, that softly rounds his ring

To midsummer, and June is on the way:

The perfect season, when the hawthorn blows

Down cream-white Scottish hedges, and the spent

Airs of the evening gently swaying close

Tired eyes upon it, heavy with its scent;

While on the Downs the beating sunlight glows,

And sends the wildering roses over Kent.

Hesepe, 21st May