Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895-1915)
To Germany
1You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,
2And no man claimed the conquest of your land.
3But gropers both through fields of thought confined
4We stumble and we do not understand.
5You only saw your future bigly planned,
6And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,
7And in each other's dearest ways we stand,
8And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.
9When it is peace, then we may view again
10With new-won eyes each other's truer form
11And wonder. Grown more loving-kind and warm
12We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,
13When it is peace. But until peace, the storm
14The darkness and the thunder and the rain.
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Charles Hamilton Sorley. Marlborough and other Poems. 4th edition. Cambridge: University Press, 1919: 73. PR 6037 O7M3 1919 Robarts Library
First publication date:
1916
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1998.
Recent editing: 2:2002/3/20
Composition date:
August
1914
Composition date note: W. R. S. would date this poem in August 1914 (p. 131)
Form: sonnet
Rhyme: ababbabacddcdc
Other poems by Charles Hamilton Sorley
