<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="center" class="head">The Trenches</h1><div class="stanza"><p class="line"><span class="smallcaps">Endless</span> lanes sunken in the clay,</p><p class="line">Bays, and traverses, fringed with wasted herbage,</p><p class="line">Seed-pods of blue scabious, and some lingering blooms;</p><p class="line">And the sky, seen as from a well,</p><p class="line">Brilliant with frosty stars.</p><p class="line">We stumble, cursing, on the slippery duck-boards.</p><p class="line">Goaded like the damned by some invisible wrath,</p><p class="line">A will stronger than weariness, stronger than animal fear,</p><p class="line">Implacable and monotonous.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Here a shaft, slanting, and below</p><p class="line">A dusty and flickering light from one feeble candle</p><p class="line">And prone figures sleeping uneasily,</p><p class="line">Murmuring,</p><p class="line">And men who cannot sleep,</p><p class="line">With faces impassive as masks,</p><p class="line">Bright, feverish eyes, and drawn lips,</p><p class="line">Sad, pitiless, terrible faces,</p><p class="line">Each an incarnate curse.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Here in a bay, a helmeted sentry</p><p class="line">Silent and motionless, watching while two sleep,</p><p class="line">And he sees before him</p><p class="line">With indifferent eyes the blasted and torn land</p><p class="line">Peopled with stiff prone forms, stupidly rigid,</p><p class="line">As tho' they had not been men.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Dead are the lips where love laughed or sang,</p><p class="line">The hands of youth eager to lay hold of life,</p><p class="line">Eyes that have laughed to eyes,</p><p class="line">And these were begotten,</p><p class="line">O Love, and lived lightly, and burnt</p><p class="line">With the lust of a man's first strength: ere they were rent,</p><p class="line">Almost at unawares, savagely; and strewn</p><p class="line">In bloody fragments, to be the carrion</p><p class="line">Of rats and crows.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">And the sentry moves not, searching</p><p class="line">Night for menace with weary eyes.</p></div><p class="byline">Frederic Manning</p></body></html> · Great War