Classic and Contemporary Poetry
FIELD AMBULANCE IN RETREAT; VIA DOLOROSA, VIA SACRA, by MAY SINCLAIR Poet's Biography First Line: A straight flagged road, laid on the rough earth Last Line: On the sacred, dolorous way. Subject(s): Travel; Women; World War I; Journeys; Trips; First World War | ||||||||
A straight flagged road, laid on the rough earth, A causeway of stone from beautiful city to city, Between the tall trees, the slender, delicate trees, Through the flat green land, by plots of flowers, by black canals thick with heat. II The road-makers made it well Of fine stone, strong for the feet of the oxen and of the great Flemish horses, And for the high waggons piled with corn from the harvest. But the labourers are few; They and their quiet oxen stand aside and wait By the long road loud with the passing of the guns, the rush of armoured cars and the tramp of an army on the march forward to battle; And, where the piled corn-waggons went, our dripping ambulance carries home Its red and white harvest from the fields. III The straight-flagged road breaks into dust, into a thin white cloud, About the feet of a regiment driven back league by league, Rifles at trail, and standards wrapped in black funeral cloths. Unhasting, proud in retreat, They smile as the Red Cross Ambulance rushes by. (You know nothing of beauty and of desolation who have not seen That smile of an army in retreat.) They go: and our shining, beckoning danger goes with them, And our joy in the harvests that we gathered in at nightfall in the fields; And like an unloved hand laid on a beating heart Our safety weighs us down. Safety hard and strange; stranger and yet more hard, As, league after dying league, the beautiful, desolate Land Falls back from the intolerable speed of an Ambulance in retreat On the sacred, dolorous Way. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...D'ANNUNZIO by ERNEST HEMINGWAY 1915: THE TRENCHES by CONRAD AIKEN TO OUR PRESIDENT by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE HORSES by KATHARINE LEE BATES CHILDREN OF THE WAR by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE U-BOAT CREWS by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE RED CROSS NURSE by KATHARINE LEE BATES WAR PROFITS by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE UNCHANGEABLE by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN AFTER THE RETREAT by MAY SINCLAIR |
|