Another War Poet (Poetry)

ANOTHER WAR POET

A close friend of JRR Tolkien, Geoffrey Bache Smith (1894 - 1916)
died after being hit by shrapnel during the Battle of the Somme
A collection of his poetry ‘A Spring Harvest’ was published in 1918,
edited by Tolkien, who also wrote the preface.

I’ve been reading the words of a dead man
dustful shelves groaning quietly with ghosts
fleeting pleasure fast-skewered with pity
for a world so defined by cruel loss

Now he rests in a few flimsy pages
while his voice down ten decades still rings
a faint bell as a solemn reminder
tolling soft the sad message it brings

Twenty-two and cut down before Christmas
a young sapling in forests of war
livid scars tell of life thinned to paper
counting rings at its poetic core

So long-dead yet I hear how he whispers
and I mourn for those lives all undone
by the godless promoters of conflict
and the man who invented the gun

Foolish bravery wasted in fighting
seas of blood all so pointlessly spilt
every decent man suffers for murder
thus the victory’s tarnished with guilt

For the theft of those years taken from them
like soft fruit fallen into the mud
they were lost in Spring’s premature harvest
in the cause of some false greater good