Ivor Gurney - Sonnets 1917 - 3 - Servitude
Channel: PoetryProse Project
Date: 2015-04-03

3. SERVITUDE 

If it were not for England, who would bear 
This heavy servitude one moment more ? 
To keep a brothel, sweep and wash the floor 
Of filthiest hovels were noble to compare 
With this brass-cleaning life. Now here, now 

there 
Harried in foolishness, scanned curiously o'er 
By fools made brazen by conceit, and store 
Of antique witticisms thin and bare. 

Only the love of comrades sweetens all, 

Whose laughing spirit will not be outdone. 

As night-watching men wait for the sun 

To hearten them, so wait I on such boys 

As neither brass nor Hell-fire may appal, 

Nor guns, nor sergeant-major's bluster and noise.