Veterans’ Day: A Soldier—His Prayer

This anonymous poem was blown into a slit trench in Tunisia during a heavy bombardment in the early days of World War II. It was included in Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times, edited by Joan Murray.

A Soldier—His Prayer

Stay with me, God. The night is dark,
The night is cold: my little spark
Of courage dies. The night is long;
Be with me God, and make me strong.

I love a game; I love a fight.
I hate the dark; I love the light.
I love my child; I love my wife.
I am no coward. I love Life,

Life with its change of mood and shade.
I want to live. I'm not afraid,
But me and mine are hard to part;
Oh, unknown God, lift up my heart.

You stilled the waters at Dunkirk
And saved Your servants. All Your work
Is wonderful, dear God. You strode
Before us down that dreadful road.

We were alone, and hope had fled;
We loved our country and our dead.
And could not shame them; so we stayed
The course and were not much afraid.

Dear God that nightmare road! And then
That sea! We got there—we were men.
My eyes were blind, my feet were torn,
My soul sang like a bird at dawn.

I knew that death is but a door.
I knew what we were fighting for:
Peace for the kids, our brothers freed,
A kinder world, a cleaner breed.

I'm but the son my mother bore,
A simple man, and nothing more.
But—God of strength and gentleness,
Be pleased to make me nothing less.

Help me, O God, when Death is near
to mock the haggard face of fear,
That when I fall—if fall I must—
My soul may triumph in the Dust.

Comments

[Steve]

That's a remarkable poem--- not just for its sentiments but (for an American reader, at least) for the ways in which it shows, and uses, the robust traditions of vernacular poetry-making, so much alive in Britain and in America until recent decades. The author must have had in mind the metre, and the feeling, of the great 18th-century Protestant hymns-- Cowper's "Olney Hymns" say-- vernacular religious poetry is present to him as something still being written, as Dunkirk (a miracle equal to the parting of the Red Sea) rhymes with God's work (as in Cowper's "Light Shining Out of Darkness," the hymn more widely known and sung as "God moves/ works in a mysterious way"). It makes me want to see what else is in Murray's anthology!

[kenneth herman]

I first read this poem in the 1940s as a teenager, it then conveyed to me the horrors of the retreat to Dunkirk and the indomitable spirit of the writer.Now approaching to age of 80 I wonder whether that spirit still dwells amongst us in this country.

[Kenneth Lewis Pratt]

Sorting out my papers today, I came across what would appear to be the same poem with slight differences. The writer is named under the poem as Pte. H.W. Wilson. I served in the Army during the War (WWll) but I cannot remember when I came in to possession of this stained piece of typewritten paper. According to the note heading the poem, it was written during the battle at El Aqheila, North Africa. I would like to send it to his family rather than throw this away. Can someone advise?