"On Hearing a Lark Singing at Dawn in the Trenches"


O, Wonder Bird, what song is this you sing?
   What message to us weary, war-worn men?
Is it to memories of peace you cling?
   Of sunlit strath and flower-bejewelled glen? 

Would you remind us of quiet country lanes?
   Of ivied homesteads nestling ‘mong the hills?
Of rose-cheeked maids meandering with their swains?
   Of pebbly rivulets and whispering rills?

Or do your notes protest against the fate
   That forced you, neutral, from your love-lined nest,
To share the humans' agony of hate
   That found no echo in your joyous breast?

I think at times you mock great Man’s strange mind,
   Which, civilised, creates an earthly Hell,
Calling it war; red murder of a kind
   Undreamt by Attila before he fell.

There was a tremble in your song just now
   That spoke of mate, of child-birds lost to you.
O Wonder Bird, we watchers marvel how
    Your wings still flutter in that sky of blue.

Haste, herald lark, for soon your silver tune
    Will die among the discord of the guns;
The heavens will shriek in agony by noon.
    Hide, Wonder bird;


                                                 
John B Nicholson                                                France, May 1915