Yozgad is situated in a remote and high valley of the Anatolian tableland. From the barren hills which rise around it, the eye descends upon a tumult of rocky ridges and stony uplands, deeply scored by ravines whose scarped and bastioned sides have been wrought by the storms of the autumnal rain and the rushing waters of the melting snow. A scene desolate and sublime, a vast expanse which man and Nature have co-imbued with fearfulness and nameless beauty. In this region man moves, weapon in hand, ready to strike first and once, or lie unburied till the winter sheds its snow. The thoughts of a prisoner in such surroundings, severed from all but his own sensations and those of his companions in captivity, must ebb and flow as the tides, and rise and fall like the alternations of day and night. (p. 42)
How like an ocean is existence here,Whose waves are days and moving follow on;Each seventh wave looms larger than the rest,As Sabbaths mark the passing of the weeks:Each wave's uplift is as the rise of day,And lifted high we look around and findNor ship, nor shore, nor bound, but only sky;Then to the trough of night the day descends,As the wave sweeps from under plunging down,And passes onward leaving us still here.So the waves pass, while we remain like hulksWhose means of self-propulsion are all goneThat once rejoiced to chase them passing by.Thus derelict we lie, time passes on,And we shall see nor home, nor friend, nor love,'Til, as the tides of ocean cast their deadSpewed forth among the jetsam of the shore,We too return, -- the flotsam of the war.So now heave-to my argosy and bearThee up into the eye of this chill wind,And like a skilled experienced marinerI'll now ride out the storm of this vile war.
