Posted in celebration of national poetry month. This poem was written by a 19-year-old English army officer, Charles Hamilton Sorley, during World War I. You can learn more about Mr. Sorley and the poem here. Have a favorite poem you have read or written? Please email it to frank@mytownmatters.com.

The Song of the Ungirt Runners by Charles Hamilton Sorley

We swing ungirded hips
And lighten’d are our eyes,
The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
We know not whom we trust
Nor whitherward we fare,
But we run because we must
Through the great wide air.

The waters of the seas
Are troubled as by storm.
The tempest strips the trees
And does not leave them warm.
Does the tearing tempest pause?
Do the tree-tops ask it why?
So we run without a cause
’Neath the big bare sky.

The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
But the storm the water whips
And the wave howls to the skies.
The winds arise and strike it
And scatter it like sand,
And we run because we like it
Through the broad bright land.