Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 74: XIV

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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.

XIV

Sweetly at length, like faithful love abused

By cold neglect, in this domed interval

Of silent time returns with soft footfall

The echo of a music long disused.

Ah me, before such strains I stand accused,

So early known, and then my all in all,

And with the magic of the morning’s call

And ethos of my children interfused—

A nameless sense of youth that will not die,

While Homer’s volleying dactyls surging send

The music of the wind-entangled seas

Around the world, and as the billows fly,

Shouldering each other shorewards, metely blend

His harping with the thunderous centuries.

Hesepe, 8th June