More songs by the fighting men. Soldiers poets: second series/Harold John Jarvis
HAROLD JOHN JARVIS
Corporal, The Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry
Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori
IF England calls to-day—
The last long call of all,
Valhalla's Trumpet-call:
Then may I live until
The Goal shines past the Hill
And in the last grand rally
Hear echoed God's Reveille
In the Home Camp.
If England calls this day—
If in the great, grim fight
I fall—with eyes all bright
With sacrificial flame
Whispering Her great name:
Let these weak verses show
To all the friends I know—
I gladly died.
If England calls this day—
Remembered not hardship
Glad-borne in War's dread grip—
Not the strain of training,
Or a year's campaigning,
But the joy of greeting
Pleasures, tho' but fleeting,
Entwined therewith.
If England calls this day—
May those who gave their love,
Who lifted me above
The petty things of Earth,
And taught me all the worth
Of splendid aim in Life,
Know I, 'mid all this strife,
Remember them.
If England calls this day—
The last sweet Twilight calm,
When guns withheld their harm
Awhile, and let me dream
Of Things That might Have Been—
Leaf-music in the trees,
And treasured reveries,
Shall die with me.
If England calls this day—
No craven heart would go
From out a world loved so,
As I love this. Each day
More loved is Nature's sway
Of Earth, its every joy
Of Pain or Joy—yet I,
So gladly die.
If England calls this day—
With yet one aim unwon,
Of all aims just the one
Far dearer than the rest—
To woo and win the best
Thing that the World can give—
The Gift of Love—To Live
I would not wish.
If England calls this day—
Then shall I die that She
May live in Liberty—
That She may still be great
To rise above blind Hate
Of Foes—Her Flag unfurled,
God's England to the world,
For aye to be.
If England calls this day—
The rose-clad days of June,
That fled by all too soon,
Shall be with me again
In Memory—and when
The daylight sudden closes,
The perfume of June Roses
Shall waft me hence.
If England calls this day—
From those far Hills of Home,
Beyond the sky's dim dome—
Shall merge Valkyries fair,
Swift riding thro' the air—
Who know I shall be there,
Treading the rose-strewn stair
To that New Land.
If England calls this day—
In the Valkyrie's touch
Shall be forgotten much:
Her flying, perfumed hair
Shall speak of Roses rare—
And climbing thro' the breeze,
Remembered melodies
Shall call me Home.
At a Wayside Shrine
THE column halts before a wayside shrine
To change formation into battle line
From double file. 'Tis even, and the sun
Its daily circling race has wellnigh done.
Behind me in the West, a dying glow
Of gold still gleams, to cast a pale halo
Upon the shrine.
How many men before
To-night have halted at this spot, and wore
The same grim, ready look that I see now
Painted on every face from chin to brow,
And in each eye? One and all are ready
For come what may; each man now stands steady
Waiting command.
And now the line will pass
The shrine—itself as steady as the mass
Of England's sons slow moving to the fray,
Their Destiny now in the hands of—say,
The dim Divinity within that shrine—
A loving God (the stricken Christ His sign
Of Love) or what?
The shrine is rent and drilled
With bullets—aye, and some of them have killed,
Passing right thro' the thin mud walls, and past
The Hanging Figure in the plaster cast,
On to some human target, trudging by,
(Dropping it low with sharp surpriséd cry)
Even as I trudge by.
So have some died
For Right—bravely as Christ the Crucified
Died on Calvary's Cross; just as brave
And just as sacrificially. To save
The world He died, or so the worn-out creeds
Of Church would teach—but they, but men, dared deeds
And died as men. . . .
Because of Greater Love—
That Love of Loves, all other loves above—
The love of Home and Friends and Native Soil.
That these might never be the Foeman's spoil,
They gave their lives, their youth, their golden dreams
And airy castles, built where Sunlight gleams,
And Roses bloom . . .
And gave them willingly
As Christ gave His, that day on Calvary.
A stricken Christ . . . a broken shrine . . . and men
In khaki marching by. . . . How little less
Divine these khaki-clads in their worn dress
Than He, the Christ of God? For in each man
The same soul burns.
And ere I leave the shrine,
I look upon the Christ—then at the line
Of men . . . back to His face and those closed eyes
So open when one lingeringly looks
As if into their depths. These men . . . those eyes . . .
Loving, pain-haunted eyes, hard gazing down
They seem,
On these these other Christs in thin disguise
Of khaki- brown.