(To Maurice Samuel)
Stretched and silent they lie to the furious gold of the dawn,
And the earth like a leper's face is pitted and scarred.
Firm in the grip of the wire relentless and hard,
They lie with their dead young faces pallid and drawn.
Somewhere stupidly, thickly, a big gun booms!
A rifle cracks like the spit of a snake in the trees!
And ever the great sun rises, rolling the glooms
Of the sulphurous night to the fields and the cliffs and the seas.
The groan of a dying man crawls out from his teeth!
He groans no more: his lips become leaden and cold!
And ever the sun flashes forth like a sword from its sheath,
And dazzles the dawn with terrors of scarlet and gold.
The guns snarl out like a dog reluctant and grim.
The triggers of rifles loosen in blue numb hands.
Faintly the wings of a silence frightened and dim
Hover down closer over the blasted lands.
Gods of the great wars,
Gods that stand
Somewhere afar off,
Cruel and grand,
Silence, Silence,
In No Man's Land!
Gods of the great wars,
Cruel and high,
Listen afar off!
Grant us to die
With the song of Silence
In the morning sky!
Gods of the great wars,
Gas-wave and gun,
Are ye not happy
With the red work done?
Drown ye the planets,
Shatter the sun!
Not a twitching of bloodless lip or of glazing eye!
For the Silence is deeper than Noon and older than Time,
The Silence inert and intense of the far first sky
When never a wind breathed over the primal slime.
The Sun is stayed in his march, and even Death
With the flush of triumph mantling his cheeks of gloom,
He too stands still for an instant and holds his breath.
A million of years passes by in a moment of doom.
Suddenly!
Terrible! Wild!
A skylark shatters the spell,
With a music more fiery than hell,
More frail than the laugh of a child!
His little brown wings soar high to assault the sun.
His little round throat sends a challenge audacious and far
To the pale-faced legions of Silence that waver and run,
To the uprisen dawn and every invisible star.
Ah God! the song cuts deeper than tempered steel!
The eyes overflow with the surge of a salt harsh tear,
Again to listen to Music, again to feel
The uttermost glory of living when Death is so near!
Scream of a shell! ...
Dull dead thud in a trench,
Curses and flame and stench! ...
Instantly all the white dawn,
Fragrant and frail and cool,
Breaks like a vase in the hands of a fool.
For the thick sick lips of Death have spoken,
The fine gold chain of the bird-song is broken.
The lank dank hand of Death has withdrawn
The curtain of bird-song and magic dawn
From the sullen red windows of Hell.
Rattle of rifle and shriek of gun,
Gas-cloud sickly and heavy and dun,
Death has taken his armies in hand,
And the bodies lie countless in No Man's Land.
Out of the shock of the storm
Where the foul winds meet and cry,
Something drops down at my feet,
A little brown body and sweet,
A little dead body and warm.
The tiny dead throat shall sing no more,
Nor the quick eyes flash nor the swift wings soar;
But the shells shall hurtle, the grim guns roar,
O skylark out of the sky!
My singing is ended, the pall descended on land and sea.
I sang my song to the tune of my own heart-beat
Between the sound of the wars, and there sang with me
My little brother the skylark, dead at my feet.
France, 1917