Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 91: V

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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.

V

Of Tragedy the essence and the goal

Is Vindication. Fear and pity close

The tale with mourning, but the issue shows

The moral order master of man’s soul.

And as its slow and solemn waters roll

Thunderingly through the scenes, a sense there grows

Of some high Presence working in these throes,

Whose Being is the topic and the whole.

Thus not these personal griefs alone comprise

The theme of Tragedy, that theme more vast

Than its own content, deeper than the sighs

Of the doomed Titan hounded home at last—

The Universe in action, and the cries

Of Cosmic Vengeance closing with the Past.

Hesepe, 25th May