E. W. Hornung
The Young Guard – World War I Poems & Author's Memoirs From the Great War
Consecration, Lord's Leave, Last Post, The Old Boys, Ruddy Young Ginger
Published by
Advanced Digital Solutions & High-Quality eBook Formatting
[email protected] 2017 OK Publishing ISBN 978-80-7583-286-3
Table of Contents
Notes of a Camp Follower on the Western Front
Poems
Consecration
Children we deemed you all the days We vexed you with our care: But in a Universe ablaze, What was your childish share? To rush upon the flames of Hell, To quench them with your blood! To be of England's flower that fell Ere yet it brake the bud!
And we who wither where we grew. And never shed but tears, As children now would follow you Through the remaining years; Tread in the steps we thought to guide, As firmly as you trod; And keep the name you glorified Clean before man and God.
Lord’s Leave
(1915)
No Lord's this year: no silken lawn on which
A dignified and dainty throng meanders.
The Schools take guard upon a fierier pitch
Somewhere in Flanders.
Bigger the cricket here; yet some who tried
In vain to earn a Colour while at Eton
Have found a place upon an England side
That can't be beaten!
A demon bowler's bowling with his head—
His heart's as black as skins in Carolina!
Either he breaks, or shoots almost as dead
As Anne Regina;
While the deep-field-gun, trained upon your stumps,
From concrete grand-stand far beyond the bound'ry,
Lifts up his ugly mouth and fairly pumps
Shells from Krupp's foundry.
But like the time the game is out of joint—
No screen, and too much mud for cricket lover;
Both legs go slip, and there's sufficient point
In extra cover!
Cricket? 'Tis Sanscrit to the super-Hun—
Cheap cross between Caligula and Cassius,
To whom speech, prayer, and warfare are all one—
Equally gaseous!
Playing a game's beyond him and his hordes;
Theirs but to play the snake or wolf or vulture:
Better one sporting lesson learnt at Lord's
Than all their Kultur. . . .
Sinks a torpedoed Phoebus from our sight;
Over the field of play see darkness stealing;