Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 93: VII

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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.

VII

Two other words contrasting well distil

In two clear drops of sound significant,

And flavoured to the thought, the crowning want

That mars our enterprise—the English will,

Steadfast of purpose, but unsteady still

In the particular. Strange humours haunt

The earnestness of battle, and we flaunt

The eccentric in us even as we kill.

A nobly erring pride is here, disdain

Of death—and duty, when that duty chimes

Not with our liking; and our stubbornness

Wants sternness in it to perfect the grain.

Of late to tragic heights the contrast climbs,

Which “Ernst” and “Eigensinnigkeit” express.

Hesepe, 5th July