A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919/The Last Rally
THE LAST RALLY
(Under England's supplementary Conscription Act, the last of the married men joined her colours on June 24, 1916.)
IN the midnight, in the rain,
That drenches every sooty roof and licks each window-pane,
The bugles blow for the last rally
Once again.
Through the horror of the night,
Where glimmers yet northwestward one ghostly strip of white,
Squelching with heavy boots through the untrodden ploughlands,
The troops set out. Eyes right!
These are the last who go because they must,
Who toiled for years at something levelled now in dust;
Men of thirty, married, settled, who had built up walls of comfort
That crumbled at a thrust.
Now they have naked steel,
And the heavy, sopping rain that the clammy skin can feel,
And the leaden weight of rifle and the pack that grinds the entrails,
Wrestling with a half-cooked meal.
And there are oaths and blows,
The mud that sticks and flows,
The bad and smoky billet, and the aching legs at morning,
And the frost that numbs the toes;
And the senseless, changeless grind,
And the pettifogging mass of orders muddling every mind,
And the dull-red smudge of mutiny half rising up and burning,
Till they choke and stagger blind.
But for them no bugle flares;
No bright flags leap, no gay horizon glares;
They are conscripts, middle-aged, rheumatic, cautious, weary,
With slowly thinning hairs;
Only for one to-night
A woman weeps and moans and tries to smite
Her head against a table, and another rocks a cradle,
And another laughs with flashing eyes, sitting bolt upright.