Prose & Poetry - The Muse in Arms - Ghosts
Updated - Saturday, 14 June, 2003

First published in London in November 1917 and reprinted in February 1918 The Muse in Arms comprised, in the words of editor E. B. Osborne:

"A collection of war poems, for the most part written in the field of action, by seamen, soldiers, and flying men who are serving, or have served, in the Great War".

Below is one of seven poems featured within The Ghostly Company section of the collection.  You can access other poems within the section via the sidebar to the right.

Ghosts
(Flanders 1915)
by Willoughby Weaving

By rosy woodlands all aglow
With autumn, slow-consuming fire,
By dintling brooks that broaden now,
By hill and hollow and mead and mire,
By farms mid all their yellow ricks
From ivied chimney smoking blue,
And by the lofty kiln where bricks
Stand piled in cubes so red and new,
By queer thatched hamlets all askew,
And by the little unbusy town
Around the grey spire that we knew,
We pass again, but all unknown.

Again we guide the jolting plough
Or bake the brittle, tinting clay;
But none will mark our labour now,
Urge as we will, toil as we may.

A "Buck Private" was an Americanism to describe a Private without any stripes.

Original Material © Michael Duffy 2000-07, SafeSurf Rated