In Hospital

We from the sunless, airless trench,
The mud, the muddy bread, the stench,
Of No Man’s Land, where English, French,
And Germans rest,

Came on an English April day
Through sun-filled railway-cuttings, gay
With English primroses, away
Into the West,

And found ourselves with Plymouth Sound
Beneath us, and Drake’s bowling-ground
Above; and from the heights around
The bay there came

The boom of English guns, the call
Of English bugles. Best of all,
In this kind Devon hospital,
The old, the same

Strong gentleness of nursing eyes
And mothering hearts, and hands that bring
Health radiant as an English spring
To wounded, sick, and suffering.