| George Herbert Clarke, ed. (1873–1953). A Treasury of War Poetry. 1917. |
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| 93. The Trenches |
| | | By Frederic Manning |
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| ENDLESS lanes sunken in the clay, | |
| Bays, and traverses, fringed with wasted herbage, | |
| Seed-pods of blue scabious, and some lingering blooms; | |
| And the sky, seen as from a well, | |
| Brilliant with frosty stars. | 5 |
| We stumble, cursing, on the slippery duck-boards. | |
| Goaded like the damned by some invisible wrath, | |
| A will stronger than weariness, stronger than animal fear, | |
| Implacable and monotonous. | |
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| Here a shaft, slanting, and below | 10 |
| A dusty and flickering light from one feeble candle | |
| And prone figures sleeping uneasily, | |
| Murmuring, | |
| And men who cannot sleep, | |
| With faces impassive as masks, | 15 |
| Bright, feverish eyes, and drawn lips, | |
| Sad, pitiless, terrible faces, | |
| Each an incarnate curse. | |
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| Here in a bay, a helmeted sentry | |
| Silent and motionless, watching while two sleep, | 20 |
| And he sees before him | |
| With indifferent eyes the blasted and torn land | |
| Peopled with stiff prone forms, stupidly rigid, | |
| As tho’ they had not been men. | |
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| Dead are the lips where love laughed or sang, | 25 |
| The hands of youth eager to lay hold of life, | |
| Eyes that have laughed to eyes, | |
| And these were begotten, | |
| O Love, and lived lightly, and burnt | |
| With the lust of a man’s first strength: ere they were rent, | 30 |
| Almost at unawares, savagely; and strewn | |
| In bloody fragments, to be the carrion | |
| Of rats and crows. | |
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| And the sentry moves not, searching | |
| Night for menace with weary eyes. | 35 |
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