Prose & Poetry - The Muse in Arms - Home Thoughts in Laventie
First published in London
in November 1917 and reprinted in February 1918 The Muse in Arms
comprised, in the words of editor E. B. Osborne:
"A collection of war poems, for the most part written in the field of action, by seamen, soldiers, and flying men who are serving, or have served, in the Great War".
Below is one of seven poems featured within The Mother Land section of the collection.
You can access other poems within the section via the sidebar to the right.
Home Thoughts in Laventie
by E. Wyndham Tennant
(Written in Belgium, March 1916)
Green gardens in Laventie!
Soldiers only know the street
Where the mud is churned and splashed about
By battle-wending feet;
And yet beside one stricken house there is a glimpse of grass.
Look for it when you pass.
Beyond the church whose
pitted spire
Seems balanced on a strand
Of swaying stone and tottering brick
Two roofless ruins stand,
And here behind the wreckage where the back wall should
have been
We found a garden green.
The grass was never trodden
on,
The little path of gravel
Was overgrown with celandine,
No other folk did travel
Along its weedy surface, but the nimble-footed mouse
Running from house to house.
So all among the vivid
blades
Of soft and tender grass
We lay, nor heard the limber wheels
That pass and ever pass,
In noisy continuity until their stony rattle
Seems in itself a battle.
At length we rose up from
this ease
Of tranquil happy mind,
And searched the garden's little length
Afresh pleasaunce to find;
And there, some yellow daffodils and jasmine hanging
high
Did rest the tired eye.
The fairest and most
fragrant
Of the many sweets we found,
Was a little bush of Daphne flower
Upon a grassy mound,
And so thick were the blossoms set and so divine the scent
That we were well content.
Hungry for spring, I bent my
head,
The perfume fanned my face,
And all my soul was dancing
In that little lovely place,
Dancing with a measured step from wrecked and shattered
towns
Away... upon the Downs.
I saw green banks of
daffodil,
Slim poplars in the breeze,
Great tan-brown hares in gusty March
A-courting on the leas;
And meadows with their glittering streams, and silver
scurrying dace,
Home - what a perfect place!
Shrapnel comprised steel balls ejected from shells upon detonation.
- Did you know?
