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  • Hesepe: II
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Hesepe: II

Archibald Allan Bowman

How hard it is to think upon this shoal
Of Inanition that the world’s ablaze.
How hard to link these lazy summer days
With ends and issues that will not unroll
Their lengths in aeons—mankind’s furthest goal,
Perpending in the thick and murderous haze
Of yonder battle-hurricane that lays
Legions to rest till the last tattoo roll.
On sun-beat sand the busy ants deploy;
Industrious spiders ply their little looms;
With brush and pencil or with book we toy.
The quiet evening nears; the beetle booms.
God blazes at the world. Hell gapes for joy.
And Europe whitens with those nameless tombs.

Hesepe, 30th May


Archibald Allan Bowman

from Sonnets From a Prison Camp (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1919)

Tags:

English Scotland spiders World War I
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Archibald Allan Bowman1883 - 1936

A. A. Bowman was a philosopher, Professor at Princeton and Glasgow Universities, an advocate of the League of Nations, and author of a series of poems written during incarceration as a prisoner of War in 1918.
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