Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 61: I

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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.

INFLUENCES

I

When in the waking visions of the night

I travel back the miles my feet have worn

Since with a cry my spirit was reborn,

There stirs again the anguish and delight

Felt first as each new vista on the sight

Swam in the luminous duskiness of morn,

And the soul quested down the long leagues, torn

With its own thirst for vision and more light.

One realm in thought I near with awe profound,

Where hangs the Slav for ever on his tree,

Bedewed with sorrow, with contrition crowned,

And thorns of perfected humility,

The holy flowering of that cursed ground;

And at the mighty portals Titans three.

Hesepe, 21st May