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Robert Laurence Binyon - Fetching The Wounded
Work rating: Low

At the road`s end glimmer the station lights;
 How small beneath the immense hollow of Night`s
 Lonely and living silence! Air that raced
 And tingled on the eyelids as we faced
 The long road stretched between the poplars flying
 To the dark behind us, shuddering and sighing
 With phantom foliage, lapses into hush.
 Magical supersession! The loud rush
 Swims into quiet: midnight reassumes
 Its solitude; there`s nothing but great glooms,
 Blurred stars; whispering gusts; the hum of wires.
 And swerving leftwards upon noiseless tires
 We glide over the grass that smells of dew.
 A wave of wonder bathes my body through!
 For there in the headlamps` gloom--surrounded beam
 Tall flowers spring before us, like a dream,
 Each luminous little green leaf intimate
 And motionless, distinct and delicate
 With powdery white bloom fresh upon the stem,
 As if that clear beam had created them
 Out of the darkness. Never so intense
 I felt the pang of beauty`s innocence,
    Earthly and yet unearthly. A sudden call!
 We leap to ground, and I forget it all.
 Each hurries on his errand; lanterns swing;
 Dark shapes cross and re--cross the rails; we bring
 Stretchers, and pile and number them; and heap
 The blankets ready. Then we wait and keep
 A listening ear. Nothing comes yet; all`s still.
 Only soft gusts upon the wires blow shrill
 Fitfully, with a gentle spot of rain.
 Then, ere one knows it, the long gradual train
 Creeps quietly in and slowly stops. No sound
 But a few voices` interchange. Around
 Is the immense night--stillness, the expanse
 Of faint stars over all the wounds of France.

 Now stale odour of blood mingles with keen
 Pure smell of grass and dew. Now lantern--sheen
 Falls on brown faces opening patient eyes
 And lips of gentle answers, where each lies
 Supine upon his stretcher, black of beard
 Or with young cheeks; on caps and tunics smeared
 And stained, white bandages round foot or head
 Or arm, discoloured here and there with red.
 Sons of all corners of wide France; from Lille,
 Douay, the land beneath the invader`s heel,
 Champagne, Touraine, the fisher--villages
 Of Brittany, the valleyed Pyrenees,
 Blue coasts of the South, old Paris streets. Argonne
 Of ever smouldering battle, that anon
 Leaps furious, brothered them in arms. They fell
 In the trenched forest scarred with reeking shell.
 Now strange the sound comes round them in the night
 Of English voices. By the wavering light
 Quickly we have borne them, one by one, to the air,
 And sweating in the dark lift up with care,
 Tense--sinewed, each to his place. The cars at last
 Complete their burden: slowly, and then fast
     We glide away. And the dim round of sky,
 Infinite and silent, broods unseeingly
 Over the shadowy uplands rolling black
 Into far woods, and the long road we track
 Bordered with apparitions, as we pass,
 Of trembling poplars and lamp--whitened grass,
 A brief procession flitting like a thought
 Through a brain drowsing into slumber; nought
 But we awake in the solitude immense!
 But hurting the vague dumbness of my sense
 Are fancies wandering the night: there steals
 Into my heart, like something that one feels
 In darkness, the still presence of far homes
 Lost in deep country, and in little rooms
 The vacant bed. I touch the world of pain
 That is so silent. Then I see again
 Only those infinitely patient faces
 In the lantern beam, beneath the night`s vast spaces,
 Amid the shadows and the scented dew;
 And those illumined flowers, springing anew
 In freshness like a smile of secrecy
 From the gloom--buried earth, return to me.
 The village sleeps; blank walls, and windows barred.
 But lights are moving in the hushed courtyard
 As we glide up to the open door. The Chief
 Gives every man his order, prompt and brief.
 We carry up our wounded, one by one.
 The first cock crows: the morrow is begun.
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