Headstone of an unknown soldier of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, Delville Wood Cemetery. Union of South Africa troops began the assault at Delville Wood on July 15, 1916. It was finally taken in September. On the headstone is superimposed the poem 'To My Daughter Betty, the Gift of God' by Lieutenant Tom Kettle of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, killed in action on September 9, 1916 at Guillemont, France, in the Battle of the Somme. He has no known grave. © 2013 John M. Shea

To My Daughter Betty, the Gift of God

In wiser days, my darling rosebud, blown

To beauty proud as was your mother's prime,

In that desired, delayed, incredible time,

You'll ask why I abandoned you, my own,

And the dear heart that was your baby throne,

To dice with death. And oh! they'll give you rhyme

And reason: some will call the thing sublime,

And some decry it in a knowing tone.



So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,

And tired men sigh with mud and couch and floor,

Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,

Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,

But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed,

And for the secret Scripture of the poor.



— Tom Kettle

In the field, before Guillemont, Somme, 4 September 1916

Other views: Front

Saturday, September 9, 1916

"To My Daughter Betty, the Gift of God

In wiser days, my darling rosebud, blown

To beauty proud as was your mother's prime,

In that desired, delayed, incredible time,

You'll ask why I abandoned you, my own,

And the dear heart that was your baby throne,

To dice with death. And oh! they'll give you rhyme

And reason: some will call the thing sublime,

And some decry it in a knowing tone.



So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,

And tired men sigh with mud and couch and floor,

Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,

Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,

But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed,

And for the secret Scripture of the poor.

— Tom Kettle

In the field, before Guillemont, Somme, 4 September 1916"

Quotation Context

Tom Kettle, Member of Parliament from 1906 to 1910 as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913, and was in Belgium on a gun-running mission when the war began. Appalled at the actions of the occupying army, he volunteered, and was first a recruiting officer, but later, after the apparent government acceptance of Irish Home Rule, became a Lieutenant in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. He returned to Dublin on sick leave after the the Easter Rising (in which his brother-in-law the pacifist Frank Sheehy-Skeffington was murdered), and, although he disagreed with what the rebels had done, believed they would be remembered as heroes. He was killed on September 9, 1916 leading his men at Ginchy in the Battle of the Somme. He has no known grave. He wrote the sonnet to his daughter five days before his death.

Source

The Lost Voices of World War I, An International Anthology of Writers, Poets and Playwrights by Tim Cross, page 43, copyright © 1989 by The University of Iowa, publisher: University of Iowa Press, publication date: 1989

Tags

1916-09-09, 1916, September, Tom Kettle, Kettle, Somme, Battle of the Somme