Brian Gardner

“For now that I have seen
The curd-white hawthorn once again
Break out on the new green,
And through the iron gates in the long blank wall
Have viewed across a screen
Of rosy apple-blossom the grey spire
And low red roofs and humble chimney-stacks,
And stood in spacious courtyards of old farms,
And heard green virgin wheat sing to the breeze,
And the drone of ancient worship rise and fall
In the dark church, and talked with simple folk
Of farm and village, dwelling near the earth,
Among earth's ancient elemental things:
I can with heart made bold
Go back into the ways of ruin and death
With step unflagging and with quiet breath.
(Martin Armstrong)”
― Brian Gardner, Up the Line to Death: The War Poets 1914-1918: an anthology