Fetching The Wounded

At the road's end glimmer the station lights;

How small beneath the immense hollow of Night's

Lonely and living silence! Air that raced

And tingled on the eyelids as we faced

The long road stretched between the poplars flying

To the dark behind us, shuddering and sighing

With phantom foliage, lapses into hush.

Magical supersession! The loud rush

Swims into quiet: midnight reassumes

Its solitude; there's nothing but great glooms,

Blurred stars; whispering gusts; the hum of wires.

And swerving leftwards upon noiseless tires

We glide over the grass that smells of dew.

A wave of wonder bathes my body through!

For there in the headlamps' gloom--surrounded beam

Tall flowers spring before us, like a dream,

Each luminous little green leaf intimate

And motionless, distinct and delicate

With powdery white bloom fresh upon the stem,

As if that clear beam had created them

Out of the darkness. Never so intense

I felt the pang of beauty's innocence,

    Earthly and yet unearthly. A sudden call!

We leap to ground, and I forget it all.

Each hurries on his errand; lanterns swing;

Dark shapes cross and re--cross the rails; we bring

Stretchers, and pile and number them; and heap

The blankets ready. Then we wait and keep

A listening ear. Nothing comes yet; all's still.

Only soft gusts upon the wires blow shrill

Fitfully, with a gentle spot of rain.

Then, ere one knows it, the long gradual train

Creeps quietly in and slowly stops. No sound

But a few voices' interchange. Around

Is the immense night--stillness, the expanse

Of faint stars over all the wounds of France.

Now stale odour of blood mingles with keen

Pure smell of grass and dew. Now lantern--sheen

Falls on brown faces opening patient eyes

And lips of gentle answers, where each lies

Supine upon his stretcher, black of beard

Or with young cheeks; on caps and tunics smeared

And stained, white bandages round foot or head

Or arm, discoloured here and there with red.

Sons of all corners of wide France; from Lille,

Douay, the land beneath the invader's heel,

Champagne, Touraine, the fisher--villages

Of Brittany, the valleyed Pyrenees,

Blue coasts of the South, old Paris streets. Argonne

Of ever smouldering battle, that anon

Leaps furious, brothered them in arms. They fell

In the trenched forest scarred with reeking shell.

Now strange the sound comes round them in the night

Of English voices. By the wavering light

Quickly we have borne them, one by one, to the air,

And sweating in the dark lift up with care,

Tense--sinewed, each to his place. The cars at last

Complete their burden: slowly, and then fast

    We glide away. And the dim round of sky,

Infinite and silent, broods unseeingly

Over the shadowy uplands rolling black

Into far woods, and the long road we track

Bordered with apparitions, as we pass,

Of trembling poplars and lamp--whitened grass,

A brief procession flitting like a thought

Through a brain drowsing into slumber; nought

But we awake in the solitude immense!

But hurting the vague dumbness of my sense

Are fancies wandering the night: there steals

Into my heart, like something that one feels

In darkness, the still presence of far homes

Lost in deep country, and in little rooms

The vacant bed. I touch the world of pain

That is so silent. Then I see again

Only those infinitely patient faces

In the lantern beam, beneath the night's vast spaces,

Amid the shadows and the scented dew;

And those illumined flowers, springing anew

In freshness like a smile of secrecy

From the gloom--buried earth, return to me.

The village sleeps; blank walls, and windows barred.

But lights are moving in the hushed courtyard

As we glide up to the open door. The Chief

Gives every man his order, prompt and brief.

We carry up our wounded, one by one.

The first cock crows: the morrow is begun.