A girl's voice in the night troubled my heart
Across the roar of the guns, the crash of the shells,
Low and soft as a sigh, clearly I heard it.
Where was the broken parapet, crumbling about me?
Where my shadowy comrades, crouching expectant?
A girl's voice in the dark troubled my heart.
A dream was the ooze of the trench, the wet clay slipping.
A dream the sudden out-flare of the wide-flung Verys.
I saw but a garden of lilacs, a-flower in the dusk.
What was the sergeant saying?-I passed it along.-
Did I pass it along? I was breathing the breath of the lilacs.
For a girl's voice in the night troubled my heart.
Over! How the mud sucks! Vomits red the barrage.
But I am far off in the hush of a garden of lilacs.
For a girl's voice in the night troubled my heart.
Tender and soft as a sigh, clearly I heard it.
1919
Charles Roberts had to lie about his age to fight in World War I.
Poetry Atlas has many other poems about the Somme and poems about battles around the world.