After the dread tales and red yams of the Line <br />Anything might have come to us; but the divine <br />Afterglow brought us up to a Welsh colony <br />Hiding in sandbag ditches, whispering consolatory <br />Soft foreign things. Then we were taken in <br />To low huts candle-lit shaded close by slitten <br />Oilsheets, and there but boys gave us kind welcome; <br />So that we looked out as from the edge of home. <br />Sang us Welsh things, and changed all former notions <br />To human hopeful things. And the next days' guns <br />Nor any line-pangs ever quite could blot out <br />That strangely beautiful entry to War's rout, <br />Candles they gave us precious and shared over-rations — <br />Ulysses found little more in his wanderings without doubt. <br />'David of the white rock', the' Slumber Song' so soft, and that <br />Beautiful tune to which roguish words by Welsh pit boys <br />Are sung — but never more beautiful than here under the guns' noise.<br /><br />Ivor Gurney<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/first-time-in/
