Durham County Record Office: the official archive service for County Durham and Darlington
- Home >
- Learning Zone >
- World War One >
- Recruitment >
- Transcript of Poem 'To a Conscientious Objector'
- Contact us
- About Us
- Our Records
- Visit Us
-
Family History
- Birth, marriage and death records
- Census records
- Parish registers
- Place names index
- Nonconformist Church Registers
- Wills
-
More Family History Sources
- Adoption
- Army Records
- Bankruptcy
- Bishops' Transcripts
- Cemeteries and crematoria
- Coal Mining
- Directories
- Divorce
- Durham Obituaries
- Education
- Electoral Registers
- Emigration/Immigration
- Family History Organisations
- Guild Records
- Hearth Tax Returns
- Jewish Community
- Land Tax Assessments
- Law and Order
- Libraries
- Marriage Licences, Bonds and Allegations
- Medical Records
- Military Records
- Missing Persons
- Newspapers
- Photograph collections
- Poor Law
- Salvation Army Church
- War Memorials
- Gypsy Roma Travellers
- Learning Zone
- Shop
- Collections Search
- Website Help
- Legal Information
Transcript of Poem 'To a Conscientious Objector'
Please remember that all transcripts show what is written on the page; spelling and grammatical mistakes are not corrected.
(D/Wa 5/3/5(9))
TO A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR
You'd leave me cold though this our arguing
Endured till dawn. You lack the essential thing.
Healthy and leisured, pious, gentle, learned,
'You feel forbidden to fight', and unconcerned
with that vast horror which defeat would bring.
Hence, tho' you touched of David's lyre the string,
Or wrote with quill plucked from an angel's wing,
Unless you 'gave your body to be burned',
You'd leave me cold.
'You feel it wrong to nurse'. While others fling
Red life i' the scale, what is your offering?
Levite! in you the milk of pity has turned!
For if sore wounded, and with eyes that yearned,
I lay in the Jericho Road a-perishing,
You'd leave me cold!
H.M.W.
Reading. Dec 30 1916