Work-a-day Warriors/A Shakespeare Tercentenary in the Trenches

by Joseph Lee

A SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARY IN THE TRENCHES

 

Three centuries agone since Shakespeare died,
Since he was shrouded in good English ground,
His body to the earth, his spirit free,
His bones to lie for aye, his book to live:

And here sit I, a tattered Corporal,
Reading me snatches from a tattered tome,
In fateful Flanders in a fetid trench,
While round me lie six lads in ravelled hose,
Torn kilts, and broken shoon, and lousy shirts,
Like his own Falstaff's ragged regiment.
We crouch within a dug-out's dusty depths;
A cavern in the earth; Adullam cave;
A mouse's burrowing—a mole's—no more,
Yet sanctuary 'gainst the iron storm
Which works unheeded havoc o'er our heads.

Two hundred yards away the Teuton line
Twines like some scaly serpent in the grass
Which ever and anon doth vomit fire.

And these are they would claim Will for their own?
Well, they, if more than kin, are less than kind,
For all the day, from dawning to the dusk,
They've tried us with a dozen different deaths.

E'en so; I turn the pages of his book
As Shakespeare turned each several folio
Of that vast, varied volumed Book of Life.
Here were stout words for cheer and 'couragement,
And it seemed England when we heard such words,
And leafy Warwick in a Morn o' May,
And Arden Forest 'neath a greenwood tree.

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land;

This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead!

Around us were the lodges of our dead,
Who gave their life that England still might live;
The very burrow in the which we were,
Had bones of dead men baked into the clay:
Their ghosts still seemed to linger in our lines.
But I read on; a passage from a play,
With frequent interlude and change of scene,
Till here was Denmark and the moody Dane.
Without, the Corporal did change the guard,
Even while Bernardo challenged Francisco
Upon the battlements at Elsinore:

Fran.—You come most carefully upon your hour.
Ber.—'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.
Fran.—For this relief much thanks. . . .

"And so say I," said Nick, acrawling in,
"'Tis dull work gazing into No Man's Land,
And peopling it with denizens of dream—
But do not let my coming stay the play;
The play's the thing; your audience awaits!"

So now my fingers found that sad, sweet tale,
That story of the ancient grudge between
The House of Montague and Capulet.
That old-time tear, that tale of deathless love,
Of youthful love, of love at sudden sight;
That moonlight madness of a man and maid,
That mating in a Springtime of the world,
That Eve and Adam of a later date.
And so I read. . . .
Till o'er the sullen booming of the guns
There rose the tumult of Verona's streets,
The sounds of brawl, the bickering of blades,
And Tybalt draws upon Mercutio;
And there is rapier play, and then, and then,
Mercutio is hurt 'neath Romeo's arm:

 MERCUTIO—A plague o' both your houses! I am sped. . . . 'Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague o' both your houses!

"I cry 'Amen!' to that!" upspake poor Nick,
He of reflective eye and raven hair,
Hapsburg and Hanover, Kaisers and Kings!—
My mood this moment is to quarrel most
With what would rob me of my life and love,
The beauty of the day, the dawn, the dusk,
And give us naught but dark, and dust, and death—
And yet, and yet, if only England live
Our life is but a little thing to give."

And he is dead since syne; I stood one morn,
At the chill hour of dawn, alone with what?
A man?—a memory?—a mystery?
Which was what I had loved, and yet was not;
Whose hand, that I had clasped so oft before,
Fell now from mine as in indifference;
Who heard me not, who spoke not any word,
And still seemed voluble as many tongues;
Whose eyes saw naught, yet seemed to embrace all;
Whose lips were parted as might be in smile
That death had been so little difficult.

From the grim belt of broken, blasted trees,
There spoke the rifle of a lurking foe;
The bullets spat upon the ruined wall
'Neath which he lay; silence throbbed in my ear;
A bird woke in the wood, and then a wind,
Which lifted up a tress of his dark hair
Then laid it down, like hand invisible,
And moaned like to a hungry human heart.

And there stood I, and thought of hearts would break,
And hands would move in memory 'mid that hair,
When this news reached his now unconscious home,
And I did groan for them and not for him.
I saw the dawn drift up a quiet street,
And steal into the room where he had slept;
I heard a dog bark, and a clanging bell,
And then the kindly kitchen sounds which he
Had known on many mornings long ago.

I bent me down and felt about his breast,
And took the missives, that he held so dear,
From her, the mistress of his ardent heart.
And they were red with his heart's blood.

I found her pictured image, pensive smiling, sad,
As if she had foreknowledge of his fate—
And it was also showered with that red rain.
And last of all I took the little disc,
The little round that told the little round
Of his career, and it was red with blood.
I laid one kiss upon his brow, and looked
For the last time upon his sculptured face,
And so I left him, till—what comes to pass.

But here was he alive, and, "Read," says he,
"Those passages where Romeo doth part
With Juliet and never meets her more."