Morning, if this late withered light can claim <br />Some kindred with that merry flame <br />Which the young day was wont to fling through space! <br />Agony stares from each grey face. <br />And yet the day is come; stand down! stand down! <br />Your hands unclasp from rifles while you can; <br />The frost has pierced them to the bended bone? <br />Why see old Stevens there, that iron man, <br />Melting the ice to shave his grotesque chin! <br />Go ask him,, shall we win? <br />I never likes this bay, some foolish fear <br />Caught me the first time that I came here; <br />That dugout fallen in awakes, perhaps <br />Some formless haunting of some corpse's chaps. <br />True, and wherever we have held the line, <br />There were such corners, seeming-saturnine <br />For no good cause. <br /> <br />Now where the Haymarket starts, <br />There is no place for soldiers with weak hearts; <br />The minenwerfers have it to the inch. <br />Look, how the snow-dust whisks along the road <br />Piteous and silly; the stones themselves must flinch <br />In this east wind; the low sky like a load <br />Hangs over, a dead-weight. But what a pain <br />Must gnaw where its clay cheek <br />Crushes the shell-chopped trees that fang the plain – <br />The ice-bound throat gulps out a gargoyle shriek. <br />That wretched wire before the village line <br />Rattles like rusty brambles on dead bine, <br />And there the daylight oozes into dun; <br />Black pillars, those are trees where roadways run <br />Even Ypres now would warm our souls; fond fool, <br />Our tour's but one night old, seven more to cool! <br />O screaming dumbness, o dull clashing death, <br />Shreds of dead grass and willows, homes and men, <br />Watch as you will, men clench their chattering teeth <br />And freeze you back with that one hope, disdain.<br /><br />Edmund Blunden<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-zonnebeke-road/
