Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim Of twilight stares along the quiet weald, And the kind, simple country shines revealed In solitudes of peace, no longer dim. The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light, Then stretches down his head to crop the green. All things that he has loved are in his sight; The places where his happiness has been Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.
Hark! there's the horn: they're drawing the Big Wood.
Three hours ago he blundered up the trench, Sliding and poising, groping with his boots; Sometimes he tripped and lurched against the walls With hands that pawed the sodden bags of chalk. He couldn't see the man who walked in front; Only he heard the drum and rattle of feet Stepping along the trench-boards,--often splashing Wretchedly where the sludge was ankle-deep.
Voices would grunt, "Keep to your right,--make way!" When squeezing past the men from the front-line: White faces peered, puffing a point of red; Candles and braziers glinted through the chinks And curtain-flaps of dug-outs; then the gloom Swallowed his sense of sight; he stooped and swore Because a sagging wire had caught his neck. A flare went up; the shining whiteness spread And flickered upward, showing nimble rats, And mounds of glimmering sand-bags, bleached with rain; Then the slow, silver moment died in dark.
The wind came posting by with chilly gusts And buffeting at corners, piping thin And dreary through the crannies; rifle-shots Would split and crack and sing along the night, And shells came calmly through the drizzling air To burst with hollow bang below the hill.
Three hours ago he stumbled up the trench; Now he will never walk that road again: He must be carried back, a jolting lump Beyond all need of tenderness and care; A nine-stone corpse with nothing more to do.
He was a young man with a meagre wife And two pale children in a Midland town; He showed the photograph to all his mates; And they considered him a decent chap Who did his work and hadn't much to say, And always laughed at other people's jokes Because he hadn't any of his own.
That night, when he was busy at his job Of piling bags along the parapet, He thought how slow time went, stamping his feet, And blowing on his fingers, pinched with cold.