64500: Letter To S.S. From Bryn-Y-Pin

<p dir="ltr">Poor Fusilier aggrieved with fate<br>That lets you lag in France so late,<br>When all our friends of two years past<br>Are free of trench and wire at last<br>Dear lads, one way or the other done<br>With grim-eyed War and homeward gone<br>Crippled with wounds or daft or blind,<br>Or leaving their dead clay behind,<br>Where still you linger, lone and drear,<br>Last of the flock, poor Fusilier.<br>Now your brief letters home pretend<br>Anger and scorn that this false friend<br>This fickle Robert whom you knew<br>To writhe once, tortured just like you,<br>By world-pain and bound impotence<br>Against all Europe's evil sense<br>Now snugly lurks at home to nurse<br>His wounds without complaint, and worse<br>Preaches 'The Bayonet' to Cadets<br>On a Welsh hill-side, grins, forgets. 20<br>That now he rhymes of trivial things<br>Children, true love and robins' wings<br>Using his tender nursery trick.<br>Though hourly yet confused and sick<br>From those foul shell-holes drenched in gas<br>The stumbling shades to Lethe pass---<br>'Guilty' I plead and by that token<br>Confess my haughty spirit broken<br>And my pride gone; now the least chance<br>Of backward thought begins a dance<br>Of marionettes that jerk cold fear<br>Against my sick mind: either ear<br>Rings with dark cries, my frightened nose<br>Smells gas in scent of hay or rose,<br>I quake dumb horror, till again<br>I view that dread La Bassée plain<br>Drifted with smoke and groaning under<br>The echoing strokes of rival thunder<br>That crush surrender from me now.<br>Twelve months ago, on an oak bough<br>I hung, absolved of further task,<br>My dinted helmet, my gas mask,<br>My torn trench tunic with grim scars<br>Of war; so tamed the wrath of Mars<br>With votive gifts and one short prayer.<br>'Spare me! Let me forget, O spare!'<br>'Guilty' I've no excuse to give<br>While in such cushioned ease I live<br>With Nancy and fresh flowers of June<br>And poetry and my young platoon,<br>Daring how seldom search behind<br>In those back cupboards of my mind<br>Where lurk the bogeys of old fear,<br>To think of you, to feel you near<br>By our old bond, poor Fusilier.</p>