The Young Guard — Inside the Classic

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 matt and God._

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

While the deep-field-gun, trained upon your

From concrete grand-stand far beyond the

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

Both legs go slip, and there's sufficient point

Cricket? 'Tis Sanscrit to the super-Hun--

Cheap cross between Caligula and Cassius,

To whom speech, prayer, and warfare are all

Playing a game's beyond him and his hordes;

Theirs but to play the snake or wolf or

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;

Only in this one game, against the light

There's no appealing.

Now for their flares... and now at last the

Only the stars now, in their heavenly million,

Glisten and blink for pity on our scars

Last summer, centuries ago,

I watched the postman's lantern glow,

As night by night on leaden feet

He twinkled down our darkened street.

So welcome on his beaten track,

The bent man with the bulging sack!

But dread of every sleepless couch,

A whistling imp with leathern pouch!

And now I meet him in the way,

And earth is Heaven, night is Day,

For oh! there shines before his lamp

An envelope without a stamp!

Address in pencil; overhead,

The Censor's triangle in red.

Indoors and up the stair I bound:

One from the boy, still safe, still sound!

"Still merry in a dubious trench

They've taken over from the French;

Still making light of duty done;

Still full of Tommy, Fritz, and fun!

Still finding War of games the cream,

And his platoon a priceless team--

Still running it by sportsman's rule,

Just as he ran his house at school.

"Still wild about the 'bombing stunt'

He makes his hobby at the front.

Still trustful of his wondrous luck--

Prepared to take on old man Kluck!'"

Awed only in the peaceful spells,

And only scornful of their shells,

His beaming eye yet found delight

In ruins lit by flares at night,

In clover field and hedgerow green,

Apart from cover or a screen,

In Nature spurting spick-and-span

For all the devilries of Man.

He said those weeks of blood and tears

Were worth his score of radiant years.

He said he had not lived before--

Our boy who never dreamt of War!

He gave us of his own dear glow,

Last summer, centuries ago.

Bronzed leaves still cling to every bough.

I don't waylay the postman now.

Doubtless upon his nightly beat

He still comes twinkling down our street.

I am not there with straining eye--

A whistling imp could tell you why.

"Who is the one with the empty sleeve?"

"Some sport who was in the swim."

"And the one with the ribbon who's home on

"Good Lord! I remember _him!_

A hulking fool, low down in the school,

And no good at games was he--

All fingers and thumbs--and very few chums.

(I wish he'd shake hands with me!)"

"Who is the one with the heavy stick,

Who seems to walk from the shoulder?"

"Why, many's the goal you have watched him

"He's looking a lifetime older.

Who is the one that's so full of fun--

I never beheld a blither--

Yet his eyes are fixt as the furrow betwixt?"

"He cannot see out of either,"

"Who are the ones that we cannot see,

Though we feel them as near as near?

In Chapel one felt them bend the knee,

At the match one felt them cheer.

In the deep still shade of the Colonnade,

In the ringing quad's full light,

They are laughing here, they are chaffing there,

Yet never in sound or sight."

"Oh, those are the ones who never shall leave,

As they once were afraid they would!