and friendless, but a land

I did not know and that I wished to know.

* * *

When you see millions of the mouthless dead

Across your dreams in pale battalions go,

Say not soft things as other men have said,

That you’ll remember. For you need not so.

Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know

It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?

Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.

Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.

Say only this, “They are dead”. Then add thereto,

“Yet many a better one has died before”.

Then, scanning all the o’ercrowded mass, should you

Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,

It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.

Great death has made all his for evermore.

The Song of the Ungirt Runners

We swing ungirded hips,

And lightened are our eyes,

The rain is on our lips,

We do not run for prize.

We know not whom we trust

Nor whitherward we fare,

But we run because we must

Through the great wide air.

The waters of the seas

Are troubled as by storm.

The tempest strips the trees

And does not leave them warm.

Does the tearing tempest pause?

Do the tree-tops ask it why?

So we run without a cause

’Neath the big bare sky.

The rain is on our lips,

We do

not run for prize.

But the storm the water whips

And the wave howls to the skies.

The winds arise and strike it

And scatter it like sand,

And we run because we like it

Through the broad bright land.

Rooks

There, where the rusty iron lies,

The rooks are cawing all the day.

Perhaps no man, until he dies,

Will understand them, what they say.

The evening makes the sky like clay.

The slow wind waits for night to rise.

The world is half content. But they

Still trouble all the trees with cries,

That know, and cannot put away,

The yearning to the soul that flies

From day to night, from night to day.

* * *

All the hills and vales along

Earth is bursting into song,

And the singers are the chaps

Who are going to die perhaps.

O sing, marching men,

Till the valleys ring again.

Give your gladness to earth’s keeping,

So be glad, when you are sleeping.

Cast away regret and rue,

Think what you are marching to.

Little live, great pass.

Jesus Christ and Barabbas

Were found the same day.

This died, that went his way.

So sing with joyful breath,

For why, you are going to death.

Teeming earth will surely store

All the gladness that you pour.

Earth that knows of death, not tears,

Earth that bore with joyful ease

Hemlock for Socrates,

Earth that blossomed and was glad

‘Neath the cross that Christ had,

Shall rejoice and blossom too

When the bullet reaches you.

Wherefore, men marching

On the road to death, sing!

Pour your gladness on earth’s head,

So be merry, so be dead.

From the hills and valleys earth

Shouts back the sound of mirth,

Tramp of feet and lilt of song

Ringing all the road along.

All the music of their going,

Ringing swinging glad song-throwing,

Earth will echo still, when foot

Lies numb and voice mute.

On, marching men, on

To the gates of death with song.

Sow your gladness for earth’s reaping,

So you may be glad, though sleeping.

Strew your gladness on earth’s bed,

So be merry, so be dead.

To Germany

You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,

And no man claimed the conquest of your land.

But gropers both through fields of thought confined

We stumble and we do not understand.

You only saw your future bigly planned,

And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,

And in each others dearest ways we stand,

And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.

When it is peace, then we may view again

With new won eyes each other’s truer form

And wonder. Grown more loving kind and warm

We’ll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,

When it is peace. But until peace, the storm,

The darkness and the thunder and the rain.

Чарльз Гамильтон Сорли (1895–1915)

* * *

Вот Смерть: не счет разгромам и победам,

Но чистая доска, стакан пустой —

Всё милосердной прибрано рукой.

Да: Смерть — не крах, покорность Жизни бедам,

Стакан разбитый. Нам, кому такой

Дан дивный опыт, все ж конец неведом.

Едины в смерти трус, герой; враг, друг;

И победитель с побежденным. Тени

Твоих не спросят выслуг и заслуг.

Но ляжет на чреду былых мгновений

Оборванную — черная печать.

А свет твоих Надежд,