My name is Sheila Wood and I was very lucky to have known a lady called Beatrice Helen Poole.  She was born in 1877 and I knew her when I was married to her great, great nephew. She came from her home in London to live with his parents in Penn, Wolverhampton when she became frail.I was 21 years old when I first met her at her home in London.  She told me (to use her own words) that she had lived in single blessedness all her life.  She was the youngest of 23 children brought up in The Tudor House, Southampton, now a museum.  I absolutely adored her because like me she loved poetry and writing and despite the difference in our ages we had a great deal in common. She was in her nineties when she died and beforehand among other things, she gave me her notebooks containing her poetry, written from the age of 15, until middle age. She was in her late nineties when she died and I missed our precious chats about her life and loves. She made me feel very special, because she couldn’t understand why I would want to spend so much time with a very old lady.  She told me she cherished my visits and said “Darling, you are just a little lower than the angels”. Of course, I am not at all, but that indicates how quaint and sweet she was. My daughter Katy is one of the few descendants of the Poole family and some of the small gifts I received from “Auntie Babs” have now, with my daughter’s permission, been loaned to The Tudor House for display in the museum.

After she died my life became complicated and took many turns, some good, some bad and yet I still often would read some of her poems and feel very close to her and take comfort from  her writing. The books were put in a box many years ago and following several house moves, the box disappeared.

I now live with my present husband in Stourport on Severn, and during a clear out of our garage last month, we found the box and the books of poetry.  It is astonishing to think that the poems Auntie Babs wrote during World War One are now 100 years old.  I intend to try and scan some of them but to get started this is a poem she wrote 10 days after war was declared.  It is dated 14th August 1914 and is entitled “The Bugle Call”. I have not altered it in any way.  It is entirely her own poem.

THE BUGLE CALL
(August 14th 1914)
By Beatrice Poole

Oh Comrades, do you hear it – do you hear the bugle call
That’s bidding you to muster round our king?
To save our land of freedom from a despot’s horrid thrall
Let a shout for dear old England now out ring
Oh Comrades do you hear the bugle call?

Oh mothers do you hear it – do you hear the bugle call
That bids you give your strongest and your best?
Give – though your hearts be breaking and pray the Lord of all
To guard our noble armies – so will our men be blessed
While marching to the bugle call

Oh Englishmen and women do you hear the bugle call
That bids us fight the battle from afar?
By praying, working, hoping and giving great and small
To help our brave men fighting at the war
Oh England will you answer to the bugle call?

 

More poems next week.  Thanks for reading.