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  • The Zenith
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The Zenith

Hamish Mann

To-day I reach the zenith of my life,
No time more noble in my span of years
Than this, the glorious hour of splendid strife,
Of War, of cataclysmal woe, and tears.
All petty are the greatest things of yore,
All mean and sordid is my dearest lay;
I have done nothing more worthwhile before…
My hour, my chance, my crisis, are to-day!

Albert (en route for the Somme), 9th October, 1916


Hamish Mann

from A Subaltern’s Musings (London: John Long, 1918)

Tags:

fate strife World War I
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Hamish Mann1896 - 1917

Hamish Mann had written poetry since his teens, a talent which the experience of the trenches first developed, then silenced with his death at Arras in 1917.
More about Hamish Mann

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