1915

I've watched the Seasons passing slow, so slow,
In the fields between La Bassée and Béthune;
Primroses and the first warm day of Spring,
Red poppy floods of June,
August, and yellowing Autumn, so
To Winter nights knee-deep in mud or snow,
And you've been everything,
Dear, you've been everything that I most lack
In these soul-deadening trenches---pictures, books,
Music, the quiet of an English wood,
Beautiful comrade-looks,
The narrow, bouldered mountain-track,
The broad, full-bosomed ocean, green and black,
And Peace, and all that's good.



 A Boy In Church

 
'Gabble-gabble,...brethren,...gabble-gabble!'
My window frames forest and heather.
I hardly hear the tuneful babble,
Not knowing nor much caring whether
The text is praise or exhortation,
Prayer or thanksgiving, or damnation.
Outside it blows wetter and wetter,
The tossing trees never stay still.
I shift my elbows to catch better
The full round sweep of heathered hill.
The tortured copse bends to and fro
In silence like a shadow-show.
The parson's voice runs like a river
Over smooth rocks. I like this church:
The pews are staid, they never shiver,
They never bend or sway or lurch.
'Prayer,' says the kind voice, 'is a chain
That draws down Grace from Heaven again.'
I add the hymns up, over and over,
Until there's not the least mistake.
Seven-seventy-one. (Look! there's a plover!
It's gone!) Who's that Saint by the lake?
The red light from his mantle passes
Across the broad memorial brasses.
It's pleasant here for dreams and thinking,
Lolling and letting reason nod,
With ugly serious people linking
Sad prayers to a forgiving God....
But a dumb blast sets the trees swaying
With furious zeal like madmen praying.



 A Child'S Nightmare

 
Through long nursery nights he stood
By my bed unwearying,
Loomed gigantic, formless, queer,
Purring in my haunted ear
That same hideous nightmare thing,
Talking, as he lapped my blood,
In a voice cruel and flat,
Saying for ever, 'Cat!...Cat!...Cat!...'
That one word was all he said,
That one word through all my sleep,
In monotonous mock despair.
Nonsense may be light as air,
But there's Nonsense that can keep
Horror bristling round the head,
When a voice cruel and flat
Says for ever, 'Cat!...Cat!...Cat!...'
He had faded, he was gone
Years ago with Nursery Land,
When he leapt on me again
From the clank of a night train,
Overpowered me foot and hand,
Lapped my blood, while on and on
The old voice cruel and flat
Purred for ever, 'Cat!...Cat!...Cat!...'
Morphia drowsed, again I lay
In a crater by High Wood:
He was there with straddling legs,
Staring eyes as big as eggs,
Purring as he lapped my blood,
His black bulk darkening the day,
With a voice cruel and flat,
'Cat!...Cat!...Cat!...' he said,
'Cat!...Cat!...'
When I'm shot through heart and head,
And there's no choice but to die,
The last word I'll hear, no doubt,
Won't be 'Charge!' or 'Bomb them out!'
Nor the stretcher-bearer's cry,
'Let that body be, he's dead!'
But a voice cruel and flat
Saying for ever, 'Cat!...Cat!...Cat!'



 A Dedication Of Three Hats

 
This round hat I devote to Mars,
Tough steel with leather lined.
My skin's my own, redeemed by scars
From further still more futile wars
The God may have in mind.
Minerva takes my square of black
Well-tasselled with the same;
Her dullest nurselings never lack
With hoods of scarlet at their back
And letters to their name.
But this third hat, this foolscap sheet,
(For there's a strength in three)
Unblemished, conical and neat
I hang up here without deceit
To kind Euphrosyne.
Goddess, accept with smiles or tears
This gift of a gross fool
Who having sweated in death fears
With wounds and cramps for three long years
Limped back, and sat for school.



 A Letter From Wales

 
(Richard Rolls to his friend, Captain Abel Wright)
This is a question of identity
Which I can't answer. Abel, I'll presume
On your good-nature, asking you to help me.
I hope you will, since you too are involved
As deeply in the problem as myself.
Who are we? Take down your old diary, please,
The one you kept in France, if you are you
Who served in the Black Fusiliers with me.
That is, again, of course, if I am I---
This isn't Descartes' philosophic doubt,
But, as I say, a question of identity,
And practical enough.---Turn up the date,
July the twenty-fourth, nineteen-sixteen,
And read the entry there:
'To-day I met
Meredith, transport-sergeant of the Second.
He told me that Dick Rolls had died of wounds.
I found out Doctor Dunn, and he confirms it;
Dunn says he wasn't in much pain, he thinks.'
Then the first draft of a verse-epitaph,
Expanded later into a moving poem.
'Death straddled on your bed: you groaned and tried
To stare him out, but in that death-stare died.'
Yes, died, poor fellow, the day he came of age.
But then appeared a second Richard Rolls
(Or that's the view that the facts force on me),
Showing Dick's features to support his claim
To rank and pay and friendship, Abel, with you.
And you acknowledged him as the old Dick,
Despite all evidence to the contrary,
Because, I think, you missed the dead too much.
You came up here to Wales to stay with him
And I don't know for sure, but I suspect
That you were dead too, killed at the Rectangle
One bloody morning of the same July,
The time that something snapped and sent you Berserk:
You ran across alone, with covering fire
Of a single rifle, routing the Saxons out
With bombs and yells and your wild eye; and stayed there
In careless occupation of the trench
For a full hour, reading, by all that's mad,
A book of pastoral poems! Then, they say,
Then you walked slowly back and went to sleep
Without reporting; that was the occasion,
No doubt, they killed you: it was your substitute
Strolled back and laid him down and woke as you,
Showing your features to support his claim
To rank and pay and friendship, Abel, with me.
So these two substitutes, yours and my own
(Though that's an Irish way of putting it,
For the I now talking is an honest I,
Independent of the I's now lost,
And a live dog's as good as a dead lion),
So, these two friends, the second of the series,
Came up to Wales pretending a wild joy
That they had cheated Death: they stayed together
At the same house and ate and drank and laughed
And wrote each other's poems, much too lazy
To write their own, and sat up every night
Talking and smoking almost until dawn.
Yes, they enjoyed life, but unless I now
Confound my present feeling, with the past, 
They felt a sense of unreality
In the proceedings---stop! that's good, proceedings,
It suggests ghosts.---Well, then I want to ask you
Whether it really happened. Eating, laughing,
Sitting up late, writing each other's verses,
I might invent all that, but one thing happened
That seems too circumstantial for romance.
Can you confirm it? Yet, even if you can,
What does that prove? for who are you? or I?
Listen, it was a sunset. We were out
Climbing the mountain, eating blackberries;
Late afternoon, the third week in September,
The date's important: it might prove my point,
For unless Richard Rolls had really died
Could he have so recovered from his wounds
As to go climbing less than two months later?
And if it comes to that, what about you?
How had you come on sick-leave from the Line?
I don't remember you, that time, as wounded.
Anyhow ... We were eating blackberries
By a wide field of tumbled boulderstones
Hedged with oaks and nut-trees. Gradually
A glamour spread about us, the low sun
Making the field unreal as a stage,
Gilding our faces with heroic light;
Then oaks and nut-boughs caught this golden flood,
Sending it back in a warm flare of green ...
There was a mountain-ash among the boulders,
But too full-clustered and symmetrical
And highly coloured to convince as real.
We stopped blackberrying and someone said
(Was it I or you?) 'It is good for us to be here.'
The other said, 'Let us build Tabernacles'
(In honour of a new Transfiguration;
It was that sort of moment); but instead
I climbed up on the massive pulpit stone,
An old friend, but unreal with the rest,
And prophesied---not indeed of the future,
But declaimed poetry, and you climbed up too
And prophesied. The next thing I remember
Was a dragon scaly with fine-weather clouds
Poised high above the sun, and the sun dwindling
And then the second glory.
 You'll remember
That we were not then easily impressed
With pyrotechnics, whether God's or Man's.
We had seen the sun rise daily, weeks on end,
And watched the nightly rocket-shooting, varied
With red and green, and livened with gun-fire
And the loud single-bursting overgrown squib
Thrown from the minen-werfer: and one night
From a billet-window some ten miles away
We had watched the French making a mass-attack
At Notre Dame de Lorette, in a thunderstorm.
That was a grand display of all the Arts,
God's, Man's, the Devil's: in the course of which,
So lavishly the piece had been stage-managed,
A Frenchman was struck dead by a meteorite,
That was the sort of gala-show it was!
But this Welsh sunset, what shall I say of it?
It ended not at all as it began,
An influence rather than a spectacle
Raised to a strange degree beyond all wonder.
And I remember that we looked and found
A region of the sky below the dragon
Where we could gaze behind all time and space
And see as it were the colour of pure thought,
The texture of emptiness, and at that sight
We came away, not daring to see more:
Death was the price, we knew, of such perfection
And walking home ...
fell in with Captain Todd,
The Golf-Club Treasurer; he greeted us
With 'Did you see that splendid sunset, boys?
Magnificent, was it not? I wonder now,
What writer could have done real justice to it
Except, of course, my old friend Walter Pater?
Ruskin perhaps? Yes, Ruskin might have done it.'
Well, did that happen, or am I just romancing?
And then again, one has to ask the question
What happened after to that you and me?
I have thought lately that they too got lost.
My representative went out once more
To France, and so did yours, and yours got killed,
Shot through the throat while bombing up a trench
At Bullecourt; if not there, then at least
On the thirteenth of July, nineteen eighteen,
Somewhere in the neighbourhood of Albert,
When you took a rifle bullet through the skull
Just after breakfast on a mad patrol.
But still you kept up the same stale pretence
As children do in nursery battle-games,
'No, I'm not dead. Look, I'm not even wounded.'
And I admit I followed your example,
Though nothing much happened that time in France.
I died at Hove after the Armistice,
Pneumonia, with the doctor's full consent.
I think the I and you who then took over
Rather forgot the part we used to play;
We wrote and saw each other often enough
And sent each other copies of new poems,
But there was a constraint in all our dealings,
A doubt, unformulated, but quite heavy
And not too well disguised. Something we guessed
Arising from the War, and yet the War
Was a forbidden ground of conversation.
Now why, can you say why, short of accepting
My substitution view? Then yesterday,
After five years of this relationship,
I found a relic of the second Richard,
A pack-valise marked with his name and rank ...
And a sunset started, most unlike the other,
A pink-and-black depressing sort of show
Influenced by the Glasgow School of Art.
It sent me off on a long train of thought
And I began to feel badly confused,
Being accustomed to this newer self;
I wondered whether you could reassure me.
Now I have asked you, do you see my point?
What I'm asking really isn't 'Who am I?'
Or 'Who are you?' (you see my difficulty?)
But a stage before that, 'How am I to put
The question that I'm asking you to answer?'



 A Renascence

 
White flabbiness goes brown and lean,
Dumpling arms are now brass bars,
They've learnt to suffer and live clean,
And to think below the stars.
They've steeled a tender, girlish heart,
Tempered it with a man's pride,
Learning to play the butcher's part
Though the woman screams inside---
Learning to leap the parapet,
Face the open rush, and then
To stab with the stark bayonet,
Side by side with fighting men.
On Achi Baba's rock their bones
Whiten, and on Flanders' plain,
But of their travailings and groans
Poetry is born again.



 A Rhyme Of Friends
(In A Style Skeltonical)




Listen now this time
Shortly to my rhyme
That herewith starts
About certain kind hearts
In those stricken parts
That lie behind Calais,
Old crones and aged men
And young childrén.
About the Picardais,
Who earned my thousand thanks,
Dwellers by the banks
Of the mournful Somme
(God keep me therefrom
Until War ends)---
These, then, are my friends:
Madame Averlant Lune,
From the town of Béthune;
Good Professeur la Brune
From that town also.
He played the piccolo,
And left his locks to grow.
Dear Madame Hojdés,
Sempstress of Saint Fé.
With Jules and Suzette
And Antoinette,
Her children, my sweethearts,
For whom I made darts
Of paper to throw
In their mimic show,
'La guerre aux tranchées'.
That was a pretty play.
There was old Jacques Caron,
Of the hamlet Mailleton.
He let me look
At his household book,
'Comment vivre cent ans'.
What cares I took
To obey this wise book,
I, who feared each hour
Lest Death's cruel power
On the poppied plain
Might make cares vain!
By N?ux-les-Mines
Lived old Adelphine,
Withered and clean,
She nodded and smiled,
And used me like a child.
How that old trot beguiled
My leisure with her chatter,
Gave me a china platter
Painted with Cherubim
And mottoes on the rim.
But when instead of thanks
I gave her francs
How her pride was hurt!
She counted francs as dirt,
(God knows, she was not rich)
She called the Kaiser bitch,
She spat on the floor,
Cursing this Prussian war,
That she had known before
Forty years past and more.
There was also 'Tomi',
With looks sweet and free,
Who called me cher ami.
This orphan's age was nine,
His folk were in their graves,
Else they were slaves
Behind the German line
To terror and rapine---
O, little friends of mine
How kind and brave you were,
You smoothed away care
When life was hard to bear.
And you, old women and men,
Who gave me billets then,
How patient and great-hearted!
Strangers though we started,
Yet friends we ever parted.
God bless you all: now ends
This homage to my friends.



 An Occasion

 
'The trenches are filled in, the houseless dead
Disperse and on the rising thunder-storm
Cast their weak limbs, are whirled up overhead
In clouds of fear....'
Then suddenly as you read,
As we sat listening there, and cushioned warm,
War-scarred yet safe, alive beyond all doubt,
The blundering gale outside faltered, stood still:
Two bolts clicked at the glass doors, and a shrill
Impetuous gust of wind blew in with a shout,
Fluttering your poems. And the lamp went out.



 Apples And Water

 
Dust in a cloud, blinding weather,
Drums that rattle and roar!
A mother and daughter stood together
By their cottage door.
'Mother, the heavens are bright like brass,
The dust is shaken high,
With labouring breath the soldiers pass,
Their lips are cracked and dry.
'Mother, I'll throw them apples down,
I'll fetch them cups of water.'
The mother turned with an angry frown,
Holding back her daughter.
'But, mother, see, they faint with thirst,
They march away to war.'
'Ay, daughter, these are not the first
And there will come yet more.
'There is no water can supply them
In western streams that flow;
There is no fruit can satisfy them
On orchard-trees that grow.
'Once in my youth I gave, poor fool,
A soldier apples and water;
And may I die before you cool
Such drouth as his, my daughter.'



 Armistice Day, 1918


What's all this hubbub and yelling,
Commotion and scamper of feet,
With ear-splitting clatter of kettles and cans,
Wild laughter down Mafeking Street?
O, those are the kids whom we fought for
(You might think they'd been scoffing our rum)
With flags that they waved when we marched off to war
In the rapture of bugle and drum.
Now they'll hang Kaiser Bill from a lamp-post,
Von Tirpitz they'll hang from a tree....
We've been promised a 'Land Fit for Heroes'---
What heroes we heroes must be!
And the guns that we took from the Fritzes,
That we paid for with rivers of blood,
Look, they're hauling them down to Old Battersea Bridge
Where they'll topple them, souse, in the mud!
But there's old men and women in corners
With tears falling fast on their cheeks,
There's the armless and legless and sightless---
It's seldom that one of them speaks.
And there's flappers gone drunk and indecent
Their skirts kilted up to the thigh,
The constables lifting no hand in reproof
And the chaplain averting his eye....
When the days of rejoicing are over,
When the flags are stowed safely away,
They will dream of another wild 'War to End Wars'
And another wild Armistice day.
But the boys who were killed in the trenches,
Who fought with no rage and no rant,
We left them stretched out on their pallets of mud
Low down with the worm and the ant.



 Bazentin, 1916
(A Reminiscence---Robert and David)

R.
That was a curious night, two years ago,
Relieving those tired Dockers at Bazentin.
Remember climbing up between the ruins?
The guide that lost his head when the gas-shells came,
Lurching about this way and that, half-witted,
Till we were forced to find the way ourselves?
D.
Yes, twilight torn with flashes, faces muffled,
In stinking masks, and eyes all sore and crying
With lachrymatory stuff, and four men gassed.
R.
Yet we got up there safely, found the trenches
Untraversed shallow ditches, along a road
With dead men sprawled about, some ours, some theirs---
D.
Ours mostly, and those Dockers doing nothing,
Tired out, poor devils; much too tired to dig,
Or to do anything but just hold the ground:
No touch on either flank, no touch in front,
Everything in the air. I cursed, I tell you.
Out went the Dockers, quick as we filed in,
And soon we'd settled down and put things straight,
Posted the guns, dug in, got out patrols,
And sent to right and left to restore touch.
R.
There was a sunken road out on the right,
With rifle-pits half dug; at every pit
A dead man had his head thrust in for shelter.
D.
Dawn found us happy enough; a funny day ---
The strangest I remember in all those weeks.
German five-nines were bracketting down our trenches
Morning and afternoon.
R.
Why, yes; at dinner,
Three times my cup was shaken out of my hand
And filled with dirt: I had to pour out fresh.
D.
That was the mug you took from the Boche gun.
Remember that field gun, with the team killed
By a lucky shot just as the German gunners
Were limbering up? We found the gunner's treasures
In a box behind, his lump of fine white chalk
Carefully carved, and painted with a message
Of love to his dear wife, and Allied flags,
A list of German victories, and an eagle.
Then his clean washing, and his souvenirs ---
British shell-heads, French bullets, lumps of shrapnel,
Nothing much more. I never thought it lucky
To take that sort of stuff.
R.
 Then a tame magpie---
German, we guessed---came hopping into the trench,
Picking up scraps of food. That's 'One for sorrow'
I said to little Owen.
D.
Not much mistaken
In the event, when only three days later
They threw us at High Wood and (mind, we got there!)
Smashed up the best battalion in the whole corps.
But, Robert, quite the queerest thing that day
Happened in the late afternoon. Worn out,
I snatched two hours of sleep; the Boche bombardment
Roared on, but I commended my soul to God,
And slept half through it; but as I lay there snoring
A mouse, in terror of all these wild alarms,
Crept down my neck for shelter, and woke me up
In a great sweat. Blindly I gave one punch
And slew the rascal at the small of my back.
That was a strange day!
R.
Yes, and a merry one.



 Big Words

 
'I've whined of coming death, but now, no more!
It's weak and most ungracious. For, say I,
Though still a boy if years are counted, why!
I've lived those years from roof to cellar-floor,
And feel, like grey-beards touching their fourscore,
Ready, so soon as the need comes, to die:
And I'm satisfied.
For winning confidence in those quiet days
Of peace, poised sickly on the precipice side
Of Lliwedd crag by Snowdon, and in war
Finding it firmlier with me than before;
Winning a faith in the wisdom of God's ways
That once I lost, finding it justified
Even in this chaos; winning love that stays
And warms the heart like wine at Easter-tide;
Having earlier tried
False loves in plenty; oh! my cup of praise
Brims over, and I know I'll feel small sorrow,
Confess no sins and make no weak delays
If death ends all and I must die to-morrow.'
But on the firestep, waiting to attack,
He cursed, prayed, sweated, wished the proud words back.



 Callow Captain

The sun beams jovial from an ancient sky,
Flooding the round hills with heroic spate.
A callow captain, glaring, sword at thigh,
Trots out his charger through the camp gate.
Soon comes the hour, his marriage hour, and soon
He fathers children, reigns with ancestors
Who, likewise serving in the wars, won
For a much-tattered flag renewed honours.
A wind ruffles the book, and he whose name
Was mine vanishes; all is at an end.
Fortunate soldier: to be spared shame
Of chapter-years unprofitable to spend,
To ride off into reticence, nor throw
Before the story-sun a long shadow.



 Cherry-Time

 
Cherries of the night are riper
Than the cherries pluckt at noon:
Gather to your fairy piper
When he pipes his magic tune:
Merry, merry,
Take a cherry;
Mine are sounder,
Mine are rounder,
Mine are sweeter
For the eater
Under the moon.
And you'll be fairies soon.
In the cherry pluckt at night,
With the dew of summer swelling,
There's a juice of pure delight,
Cool, dark, sweet, divinely smelling.
Merry, merry,
Take a cherry;
Mine are sounder,
Mine are rounder,
Mine are sweeter
For the eater
In the moonlight.
And you'll be fairies quite.
When I sound the fairy call,
Gather here in silent meeting,
Chin to knee on the orchard wall,
Cooled with dew and cherries eating.
Merry, merry,
Take a cherry;
Mine are sounder,
Mine are rounder,
Mine are sweeter
For the eater,
When the dews fall.
And you'll be fairies all.



 Corporal Stare

 
Back from the Line one night in June
I gave a dinner at Béthune:
Seven courses, the most gorgeous meal
Money could buy or batman steal.
Five hungry lads welcomed the fish
With shouts that nearly cracked the dish;
Asparagus came with tender tops,
Strawberries in cream, and mutton chops.
Said Jenkins, as my hand he shook,
'They'll put this in the history book.'
We bawled Church anthems in choro
Of Bethlehem and Hermon snow,
And drinking songs, a mighty sound
To help the good red Pommard round.
Stories and laughter interspersed,
We drowned a long La Bassée thirst---
Trenches in June make throats damned dry.
Then through the window suddenly,
Badge, stripes and medals all complete,
We saw him swagger up the street,
Just like a live man---Corporal Stare!
Stare! Killed last month at Festubert,
Caught on patrol near the Boche wire,
Torn horribly by machine-gun fire!
He paused, saluted smartly, grinned,
Then passed away like a puff of wind,
Leaving us blank astonishment.
The song broke, up we started, leant
Out of the window---nothing there,
Not the least shadow of Corporal Stare,
Only a quiver of smoke that showed
A fag-end dropped on the silent road.



 Country At War

 
And what of home---how goes it, boys,
While we die here in stench and noise?
'The hill stands up and hedges wind
Over the crest and drop behind;
Here swallows dip and wild things go
On peaceful errands to and fro
Across the sloping meadow floor,
And make no guess at blasting war.
In woods that fledge the round hill-shoulder
Leaves shoot and open, fall and moulder,
And shoot again. Meadows yet show
Alternate white of drifted snow
And daisies. Children play at shop,
Warm days, on the flat boulder-top,
With wildflower coinage, and the wares
Are bits of glass and unripe pears.
Crows perch upon the backs of sheep,
The wheat goes yellow: women reap,
Autumn winds ruffle brook and pond,
Flutter the hedge and fly beyond.
So the first things of nature run,
And stand not still for any one,
Contemptuous of the distant cry
Wherewith you harrow earth and sky
And high French clouds, praying to be
Back, back in peace beyond the sea,
Where nature with accustomed round
Sweeps and garnishes the ground
With kindly beauty, warm or cold---
Alternate seasons never old:
Heathen, how furiously you rage,
Cursing this blood and brimstone age,
How furiously against your will
You kill and kill again, and kill:
All thought of peace behind you cast,
Till like small boys with fear aghast,
Each cries for God to understand,
I could not help it, it was my hand.'



 Dead Cow Farm

An ancient saga tells us how
In the beginning the First Cow
(For nothing living yet had birth
But elemental Cow on Earth)
Began to lick cold stones and mud:
Under her warm tongue flesh and blood
Blossomed, a miracle to believe;
And so was Adam born, and Eve.
Here now is chaos once again,
Primaeval mud, cold stones and rain.
Here flesh decays and blood drips red
And the Cow's dead, the old Cow's dead.



 Dicky

 
Mother:
Oh, what a heavy sigh!
Dicky, are you ailing?
Dicky:
Even by this fireside, mother,
My heart is failing.
To-night, across the down,
Whistling and jolly,
I sauntered out from town
With my stick of holly.
Bounteous and cool from sea
The wind was blowing,
Cloud shadows under the moon
Coming and going.
I sang old roaring songs,
Ran and leaped quick,
And turned home by St. Swithin's
Twirling my stick.
And there as I was passing
The churchyard gate,
An old man stopped me, 'Dicky,
You're walking late.'
I did not know the man,
I grew afeared
At his lean, lolling jaw,
His spreading beard,
His garments old and musty,
Of antique cut,
His body very lean and bony,
His eyes tight shut.
Oh, even to tell it now
My courage ebbs...
His face was clay, mother,
His beard, cobwebs.
In that long horrid pause
'Good-night,' he said,
Entered and clicked the gate,
'Each to his bed.'
Mother:
Do not sigh or fear, Dicky.
How is it right
To grudge the dead their ghostly dark
And wan moonlight?
We have the glorious sun,
Lamp and fireside.
Grudge not the dead their moon-beams
When abroad they ride.



 Double Red Daisies

 
Double red daisies, they're my flowers,
Which nobody else may grow.
In a big quarrelsome house like ours
They try it sometimes---but no,
I root them up because they're my flowers,
Which nobody else may grow.
Claire has a tea-rose, but she didn't plant it;
Ben has an iris, but I don't want it.
Daisies, double red daisies for me,
The beautifulest flowers in the garden.
Double red daisy, that's my mark:
I paint it in all my books!
It's carved high up on the beech-tree bark,
How neat and lovely it looks!
So don't forget that it's my trade mark;
Don't copy it in your books.
Claire has a tea-rose, but she didn't plant it;
Ben has an iris, but I don't want it.
Daisies, double red daisies for me,
The beautifulest flowers in the garden.



 Familiar Letter To Siegfried Sassoon
(From Bivouacs at Mametz Wood, July 13th, 1916)


I never dreamed we'd meet that day
In our old haunts down Fricourt way,
Plotting such marvellous journeys there
For golden-houred 'Après-la-guerre.'
Well, when it's over, first we'll meet
At Gweithdy Bach, my country seat
In Wales, a curious little shop
With two rooms and a roof on top,
A sort of Morlancourt-ish billet
That never needs a crowd to fill it.  
But oh, the country round about!
The sort of view that makes you shout
For want of any better way
Of praising God: there's a blue bay
Shining in front, and on the right
Snowdon and Hebog capped with white,
And lots of other mountain peaks
That you could wonder at for weeks,
With jag and spur and hump and cleft.
There's a grey castle on the left,
And back in the high hinterland
You'll see the grave of Shawn Knarlbrand
Who slew the savage Buffaloon
By the Nant-col one night in June,
And won his surname from the horn
Of this prodigious unicorn.
Beyond, where the two Rhinogs tower,
Rhinog Fach and Rhinog Fawr,
Close there after a four years' chase
From Thessaly and the woods of Thrace,
The beaten Dog-cat stood at bay
And growled and fought and passed away.
You'll see where mountain conies grapple
With prayer and creed in their rock chapel
Which three young children once built for them;
They call it Söar Bethlehem.
You'll see where in old Roman days,
Before Revivals changed our ways,
The Virgin 'scaped the Devil's grab,
Printing her foot on a stone slab
With five clear toe-marks; and you'll find
The fiendish thumb-print close behind.
You'll see where Math, Mathonwy's son,
Spoke with the wizard Gwydion
And bade him for South Wales set out
To steal that creature with the snout,
That new-discovered grunting beast
Divinely flavoured for the feast.
No traveller yet has hit upon
A wilder land than Meirion,
For desolate hills and tumbling stones,
Bogland and melody and old bones.
Fairies and ghosts are here galore,
And poetry most splendid, more
Than can be written with the pen
Or understood by common men.
In Gweithdy Bach we'll rest a while,
We'll dress our wounds and learn to smile
With easier lips; we'll stretch our legs,
And live on bilberry tart and eggs,
And store up solar energy,
Basking in sunshine by the sea,
Until we feel a match once more
For anything but another war.
So then we'll kiss our families,
And sail away across the seas
(The God of Song protecting us)
To the great hills of Caucasus.
Robert will learn the local bat
For billeting and things like that,
If Siegfried learns the piccolo
To charm the people as we go.
The simple peasants clad in furs
Will greet the foreign officers
With open arms, and ere they pass
Will make them tuneful with Kavasse.
In old Bagdad we'll call a halt
At the Sashuns' ancestral vault;
We'll catch the Persian rose-flowers' scent,
And understand what Omar meant.
Bitlis and Mush will know our faces,
Tiflis and Tomsk, and all such places.
Perhaps eventually we'll get
Among the Tartars of Thibet,
Hobnobbing with the Chungs and Mings,
And doing wild, tremendous things
In free adventure, quest and fight,
And God! what poetry we'll write!



 Faun

 
Here down this very way,
Here only yesterday
King Faun went leaping.
He sang, with careless shout
Hurling his name about;
He sang, with oaken stock
His steps from rock to rock
In safety keeping,
'Here Faun is free,
Here Faun is free!'
To-day against yon pine,
Forlorn yet still divine,
King Faun leant weeping.
'They drank my holy brook,
My strawberries they took,
My private path they trod.'
Loud wept the desolate God,
Scorn on scorn heaping,
'Faun, what is he,
Faun, what is he?'



 Finland

 
Feet and faces tingle
In that frore land:
Legs wobble and go wingle,
You scarce can stand.
The skies are jewelled all around,
The ploughshare snaps in the iron ground,
The Finn with face like paper
And eyes like a lighted taper
Hurls his rough rune
At the wintry moon
And stamps to mark the tune.



 Ghost Music

Gloomy and bare the organ-loft,
Bent-backed and blind the organist.
From rafters looming shadowy,
From the pipes' tuneful company,
Drifted together drowsily,
Innumerable, formless, dim,
The ghosts of long-dead melodies,
Of anthems, stately, thunderous,
Of Kyries shrill and tremulous:
In melancholy drowsy-sweet
They huddled there in harmony,
Like bats at noontide rafter-hung.



 Hate Not, Fear Not

Kill if you must, but never hate:
Man is but grass and hate is blight,
The sun will scorch you soon or late,
Die wholesome then, since you must fight.
Hate is a fear, and fear is rot
That cankers root and fruit alike,
Fight cleanly then, hate not, fear not,
Strike with no madness when you strike.
Fever and fear distract the world,
But calm be you though madmen shout,
Through blazing fires of battle hurled,
Hate not, strike, fear not, stare Death out!



 Here They Lie

Here they lie who once learned here
All that is taught of hurt or fear;
Dead, but by free will they died:
They were true men, they had pride.



 I Wonder What It Feels Like To Be Drowned?

Look at my knees,
That island rising from the steamy seas!
The candle's a tall lightship; my two hands
Are boats and barges anchored to the sands,
With mighty cliffs all round;
They're full of wine and riches from far lands....
I wonder what it feels like to be drowned?
I can make caves,
By lifting up the island and huge waves
And storms, and then with head and ears well under
Blow bubbles with a monstrous roar like thunder,
A bull-of-Bashan sound.
The seas run high and the boats split asunder....
I wonder what it feels like to be drowned?
The thin soap slips
And slithers like a shark under the ships.
My toes are on the soap-dish---that's the effect
Of my huge storms; an iron steamer's wrecked.
The soap slides round and round;
He's biting the old sailors, I expect....
I wonder what it feels like to be drowned?



 I'D Love To Be A Fairy'S Child

Children born of fairy stock
Never need for shirt or frock,
Never want for food or fire,
Always get their heart's desire:
Jingle pockets full of gold,
Marry when they're seven years old.
Every fairy child may keep
Two strong ponies and ten sheep;
All have houses, each his own,
Built of brick or granite stone;
They live on cherries, they run wild---
I'd love to be a fairy's child.



 In Spite

 
I now delight,
In spite
Of the might
And the right
Of classic tradition,
In writing
And reciting
Straight ahead,
Without let or omission,
Just any little rhyme
In any little time
That runs in my head;
Because, I've said,
My rhymes no longer shall stand arrayed
Like Prussian soldiers on parade
That march,
Stiff as starch,
Foot to foot,
Boot to boot,
Blade to blade,
Button to button,
Cheeks and chops and chins like mutton.
No! No!
My rhymes must go
Turn 'ee, twist 'ee,
Twinkling, frosty,
Will-o'-the-wisp-like, misty;
Rhymes I will make
Like Keats and Blake
And Christina Rossetti,
With run and ripple and shake.
How petty
To take
A merry little rhyme
In a jolly little time
And poke it,
And choke it,
Change it, arrange it,
Straight-lace it, deface it,
Pleat it with pleats,
Sheet it with sheets
Of empty conceits,
And chop and chew,
And hack and hew,
And weld it into a uniform stanza,
And evolve a neat,
Complacent, complete,
Academic extravaganza!



 In The Wilderness

 
He, of his gentleness,
Thirsting and hungering
Walked in the wilderness;
Soft words of grace he spoke
Unto lost desert-folk
That listened wondering.
He heard the bittern call
From ruined palace-wall,
Answered him brotherly;
He held communion
With the she-pelican
Of lonely piety.
Basilisk, cockatrice,
Flocked to his homilies,
With mail of dread device,
With monstrous barbèd stings,
With eager dragon-eyes;
Great bats on leathern wings
And old, blind, broken things
Mean in their miseries.
Then ever with him went,
Of all his wanderings
Comrade, with ragged coat,
Gaunt ribs---poor innocent---
Bleeding foot, burning throat,
The guileless young scapegoat:
For forty nights and days
Followed in Jesus' ways,
Sure guard behind him kept,
Tears like a lover wept.



 Interruption

 
If ever against this easy blue and silver
Hazed-over countryside of thoughtfulness,
Far behind in the mind and above,
Boots from before and below approach trampling,
Watch how their premonition will display
A forward countryside, low in the distance---
A picture-postcard square of June grass;
Will warm a summer season, trim the hedges,
Cast the river about on either flank,
Start the late cuckoo emptily calling,
Invent a rambling tale of moles and voles,
Furnish a path with stiles.
Watch how the field will broaden, the feet nearing,
Sprout with great dandelions and buttercups,
Widen and heighten. The blue and silver
Fogs at the border of this all-grass.
Interruption looms gigantified,
Lurches against, treads thundering through,
Blots the landscape, scatters all,
Roars and rumbles like a dark tunnel,
Is gone.
The picture-postcard grass and trees
Swim back to central: it is a large patch,
It is a modest, failing patch of green,
The postage-stamp of its departure,
Clouded with blue and silver, closing in now
To a plain countryside of less and less,
Unpeopled and unfeatured blue and silver,
Before, behind, above.



 It's A Queer Time

 
It's hard to know if you're alive or dead
When steel and fire go roaring through your head.
One moment you'll be crouching at your gun
Traversing, mowing heaps down half in fun:
The next, you choke and clutch at your right breast---
No time to think---leave all---and off you go...
To Treasure Island where the Spice winds blow,
To lovely groves of mango, quince and lime---
Breathe no goodbye, but ho, for the Red West!
It's a queer time.
You're charging madly at them yelling 'Fag!'
When somehow something gives and your feet drag.
You fall and strike your head; yet feel no pain
And find...you're digging tunnels through the hay
In the Big Barn, 'cause it's a rainy day.
Oh springy hay, and lovely beams to climb!
You're back in the old sailor suit again.
It's a queer time.
Or you'll be dozing safe in your dug-out---
A great roar---the trench shakes and falls about---
You're struggling, gasping, struggling, then...hullo!
Elsie comes tripping gaily down the trench,
Hanky to nose---that lyddite makes a stench---
Getting her pinafore all over grime.
Funny! because she died ten years ago!
It's a queer time.
The trouble is, things happen much too quick;
Up jump the Bosches, rifles thump and click,
You stagger, and the whole scene fades away:
Even good Christians don't like passing straight
From Tipperary or their Hymn of Hate
To Alleluiah-chanting, and the chime
Of golden harps...and...I'm not well to-day...
It's a queer time.



 Jane

 
As Jane walked out below the hill,
She saw an old man standing still,
His eyes in trancèd sorrow bound
On the broad stretch of barren ground.
His limbs were knarled like aged trees,
His thin beard wrapt about his knees,
His visage broad and parchment white,
Aglint with pale reflected light.
He seemed a creature fall'n afar
From some dim planet or faint star.
Jane scanned him very close, and soon
Cried,' 'Tis the old man from the moon.'
He raised his voice, a grating creak,
But only to himself would speak,
Groaning with tears in piteous pain,
'O! O! would I were home again.'
Then Jane ran off, quick as she could,
To cheer his heart with drink and food.
But ah, too late came ale and bread,
She found the poor soul stretched stone-dead.
And a new moon rode overhead.



 John Skelton

 
What could be dafter
Than John Skelton's laughter?
What sound more tenderly
Than his pretty poetry?
So where to rank old Skelton?
He was no monstrous Milton,
Nor wrote no Paradise Lost,
So wondered at by most,
Phrased so disdainfully,
Composed so painfully.
He struck what Milton missed,
Milling an English grist
With homely turn and twist.
He was English through and through,
Not Greek, nor French, nor Jew,
Though well their tongues he knew,
The living and the dead:
Learned Erasmus said,
Hic, unum Britannicarum
Lumen et decus literarum.
But oh, Colin Clout!
How his pen flies about,
Twiddling and turning,
Scorching and burning,
Thrusting and thrumming!
How it hurries with humming,
Leaping and running,
At the tipsy-topsy Tunning
Of Mistress Eleanor Rumming!
How for poor Philip Sparrow
Was murdered at Carow,
How our hearts he does harrow!
Jest and grief mingle
In this jangle-jingle,
For he will not stop
To sweep nor mop,
To prune nor prop,
To cut each phrase up
Like beef when we sup,
Nor sip at each line
As at brandy-wine,
Or port when we dine.
But angrily, wittily,
Tenderly, prettily,
Laughingly, learnedly,
Sadly, madly,
Helter-skelter John
Rhymes serenely on,
As English poets should.
Old John, you do me good!



 Jolly Yellow Moon

 
Oh, now has faded from the West
A sunset red as wine,
And beast and bird are hushed to rest
When the jolly yellow moon doth shine.
Come comrades, roam we round the mead
Where couch the sleeping kine;
The breath of night blows soft indeed,
And the jolly yellow moon doth shine.
And step we slowly, friend with friend,
Let arm with arm entwine,
And voice with voice together blend,
For the jolly yellow moon doth shine.
Whether we loudly sing or soft,
The tune goes wondrous fine;
Our chorus sure will float aloft
Where the jolly yellow moon doth shine.



 Jonah

 
A purple whale
Proudly sweeps his tail
Towards Nineveh;
Glassy green
Surges between
A mile of roaring sea.
'O town of gold,
Of splendour multifold,
Lucre and lust,
Leviathan's eye
Can surely spy
Thy doom of death and dust.'
On curving sands
Vengeful Jonah stands.
'Yet forty days,
Then down, down,
Tumbles the town
In flaming ruin ablaze.'
With swift lament
Those Ninevites repent.
They cry in tears,
'Our hearts fail!
The whale, the whale!
Our sins prick us like spears.'
Jonah is vexed;
He cries, 'What next? what next?'
And shakes his fist.
'Stupid city,
The shame, the pity,
The glorious crash I've missed.'
Away goes Jonah grumbling,
Murmuring and mumbling;
Off ploughs the purple whale,
With disappointed tail.



 Letter To S.S. From Bryn-Y-Pin

 
Poor Fusilier aggrieved with fate
That lets you lag in France so late,
When all our friends of two years past
Are free of trench and wire at last
Dear lads, one way or the other done
With grim-eyed War and homeward gone
Crippled with wounds or daft or blind,
Or leaving their dead clay behind,
Where still you linger, lone and drear,
Last of the flock, poor Fusilier.
Now your brief letters home pretend
Anger and scorn that this false friend
This fickle Robert whom you knew
To writhe once, tortured just like you,
By world-pain and bound impotence
Against all Europe's evil sense
Now snugly lurks at home to nurse
His wounds without complaint, and worse
Preaches 'The Bayonet' to Cadets
On a Welsh hill-side, grins, forgets. 20
That now he rhymes of trivial things
Children, true love and robins' wings
Using his tender nursery trick.
Though hourly yet confused and sick
From those foul shell-holes drenched in gas
The stumbling shades to Lethe pass---
'Guilty' I plead and by that token
Confess my haughty spirit broken
And my pride gone; now the least chance
Of backward thought begins a dance
Of marionettes that jerk cold fear
Against my sick mind: either ear
Rings with dark cries, my frightened nose
Smells gas in scent of hay or rose,
I quake dumb horror, till again
I view that dread La Bassée plain
Drifted with smoke and groaning under
The echoing strokes of rival thunder
That crush surrender from me now.
Twelve months ago, on an oak bough
I hung, absolved of further task,
My dinted helmet, my gas mask,
My torn trench tunic with grim scars
Of war; so tamed the wrath of Mars
With votive gifts and one short prayer.
'Spare me! Let me forget, O spare!'
'Guilty' I've no excuse to give
While in such cushioned ease I live
With Nancy and fresh flowers of June
And poetry and my young platoon,
Daring how seldom search behind
In those back cupboards of my mind
Where lurk the bogeys of old fear,
To think of you, to feel you near
By our old bond, poor Fusilier.



 Limbo

 
After a week spent under raining skies,
In horror, mud and sleeplessness, a week
Of bursting shells, of blood and hideous cries
And the ever-watchful sniper: where the reek
Of death offends the living ... but poor dead
Can't sleep, must lie awake with the horrid sound
That roars and whirs and rattles overhead
All day, all night, and jars and tears the ground;
When rats run, big as kittens: to and fro
They dart, and scuffle with their horrid fare,
And then one night relief comes, and we go
Miles back into the sunny cornland where
Babies like tickling, and where tall white horses
Draw the plough leisurely in quiet courses.



 Love And Black Magic

To the woods, to the woods is the wizard gone;
In his grotto the maiden sits alone.
She gazes up with a weary smile
At the rafter-hanging crocodile,
The slowly swinging crocodile.
Scorn has she of her master's gear,
Cauldron, alembic, crystal sphere,
Phial, philtre---'Fiddlededee
For all such trumpery trash!' quo' she.
'A soldier is the lad for me;
Hey and hither, my lad!
'Oh, here have I ever lain forlorn:
My father died ere I was born,
Mother was by a wizard wed,
And oft I wish I had died instead---
Often I wish I were long time dead.
But, delving deep in my master's lore,
I have won of magic power such store
I can turn a skull---oh, fiddlededee
For all this curious craft!' quo' she.
'A soldier is the lad for me;
Hey and hither, my lad!
'To bring my brave boy unto my arms,
What need have I of magic charms---
Abracadabra! and Prestopuff?
I have but to wish, and that is enough.
The charms are vain, one wish is enough.
My master pledged my hand to a wizard;
Transformed would I be to toad or lizard
If e'er he guessed---but fiddlededee
For a black-browed sorcerer, now,' quo' she.
'Let Cupid smile and the fiend must flee;
Hey and hither, my lad.'



 Loving Henry

 
Henry, Henry, do you love me?
Do I love you, Mary?
Oh can you mean to liken me
To the aspen tree
Whose leaves do shake and vary
From white to green
And back again,
Shifting and contrary?
Henry, Henry, do you love me,
Do you love me truly?
Oh, Mary, must I say again
My love's a pain,
A torment most unruly?
It tosses me
Like a ship at sea
When the storm rages fully.
Henry, Henry, why do you love me?
Mary, dear, have pity!
I swear, of all the girls there are
Both near and far,
In country or in city,
There's none like you,
So kind, so true,
So wise, so brave, so pretty.



 Machine Gun Fire: Cambrin

 
The torn line wavers, breaks, and falls.
'Get up, come on!' the captain calls
'Get up, the Welsh, and on we go!'
(Christ, that my lads should fail me so!)
A dying boy grinned up and said:
'The whole damned company, sir; it's dead.'
'Come on! Cowards!' bawled the captain, then
Fell killed, among his writhing men.



 Manticor In Arabia

 
<br>(The manticors of the montaines
Mighte feed them on thy braines.
---Skelton.)
Thick and scented daisies spread
Where with surface dull like lead
Arabian pools of slime invite
Manticors down from neighbouring height
To dip heads, to cool fiery blood
In oozy depths of sucking mud.
Sing then of ringstraked manticor,
Man-visaged tiger who of yore
Held whole Arabian waste in fee
With raging pride from sea to sea,
That every lesser tribe would fly
Those armèd feet, that hooded eye;
Till preying on himself at last
Manticor dwindled, sank, was passed
By gryphon flocks he did disdain.
Ay, wyverns and rude dragons reign
In ancient keep of manticor
Agreed old foe can rise no more.
Only here from lakes of slime
Drinks manticor and bides due time:
Six times Fowl Phoenix in yon tree
Must mount his pyre and burn and be
Renewed again, till in such hour
As seventh Phoenix flames to power
And lifts young feathers, overnice
From scented pool of steamy spice
Shall manticor his sway restore
And rule Arabian plains once more.



 Marigolds

With a fork drive Nature out,
She will ever yet return;
Hedge the flower bed all about,
Pull or stab or cut or burn,
She will ever yet return.
Look: the constant marigold
Springs again from hidden roots.
Baffled gardener, you behold
New beginnings and new shoots
Spring again from hidden roots.
Pull or stab or cut or burn,
They will ever yet return.
Gardener, cursing at the weed,
Ere you curse it further, say:
Who but you planted the seed
In my fertile heart, one day?
Ere you curse me further, say!
New beginnings and new shoots
Spring again from hidden roots.
Pull or stab or cut or burn,
Love must ever yet return.



 Mr. Philosopher

Old Mr. Philosopher
Comes for Ben and Claire,
An ugly man, a tall man,
With bright-red hair.
The books that he's written
No one can read.
'In fifty years they'll understand:
Now there's no need.
'All that matters now
Is getting the fun.
Come along, Ben and Claire;
Plenty to be done.'
Then old Philosopher,
Wisest man alive,
Plays at Lions and Tigers
Down along the drive---
Gambolling fiercely
Through bushes and grass,
Making monstrous mouths,
Braying like an ass,
Twisting buttercups
In his orange hair,
Hopping like a kangaroo,
Growling like a bear.
Right up to tea-time
They frolic there.
'My legs are wingle,'
Says Ben to Claire.



 Neglectful Edward

 
Nancy:
'Edward back from the Indian Sea,
What have you brought for Nancy?'
Edward:
'A rope of pearls and a gold earring,
And a bird of the East that will not sing,
A carven tooth, a box with a key---'
Nancy:
'God be praised you are back,' says she,
'Have you nothing more for your Nancy?'
Edward:
'Long as I sailed the Indian Sea
I gathered all for your fancy;
Toys and silk and jewels I bring,
And a bird of the East that will not sing:
What more can you want, dear girl, from me?'
Nancy:
'God be praised you are back,' said she,
'Have you nothing better for Nancy?'
Edward:
'Safe and home from the Indian Sea,
And nothing to take your fancy?'
Nancy:
'You can keep your pearls and your gold earring,
And your bird of the East that will not sing,
But, Ned, have you nothing more for me
Than heathenish gew-gaw toys?' says she,
'Have you nothing better for Nancy?'



 Night March

 
 
Evening: beneath tall poplar trees
We soldiers eat and smoke and sprawl,
Write letters home, enjoy our ease,
When suddenly comes a ringing call.
'Fall in!' A stir, and up we jump,
Fold the love letter, drain the cup,
We toss away the Woodbine stump,
Snatch at the pack and jerk it up.
Soon with a roaring song we start,
Clattering along a cobbled road,
The foot beats quickly like the heart,
And shoulders laugh beneath their load.
Where are we marching? No one knows,
Why are we marching? No one cares.
For every man follows his nose,
Towards the gay West where sunset flares.
An hour's march: we halt: forward again,
Wheeling down a small road through trees.
Curses and stumbling: puddled rain
Shines dimly, splashes feet and knees.
Silence, disquiet: from those trees
Far off a spirit of evil howls.
'Down to the Somme' wail the banshees
With the long mournful voice of owls.
The trees are sleeping, their souls gone,
But in this time of slumbrous trance
Old demons of the night take on
Their windy foliage, shudder and dance.
Out now: the land is bare and wide,
A grey sky presses overhead.
Down to the Somme! In fields beside
Our tramping column march the dead.
Our comrades who at Festubert
And Loos and Ypres lost their lives,
In dawn attacks, in noonday glare,
On dark patrols from sudden knives.
Like us they carry packs, they march
In fours, they sling their rifles too,
But long ago they've passed the arch
Of death where we must yet pass through.
Seven miles: we halt awhile, then on!
I curse beneath my burdening pack
Like Sinbad when with sigh and groan
He bore the old man on his back.
A big moon shines across the road,
Ten miles: we halt: now on again
Drowsily marching; the sharp goad
Blunts to a dumb and sullen pain.
A man falls out: we others go
Ungrudging on, but our quick pace
Full of hope once, grows dull, and slow:
No talk: nowhere a smiling face.
Above us glares the unwinking moon,
Beside us march the silent dead:
My train of thought runs mazy, soon
Curious fragments crowd my head.
I puzzle old things learned at school,
Half riddles, answerless, yet intense,
A date, an algebraic rule,
A bar of music with no sense.
We win the fifteenth mile by strength
'Halt!' the men fall, and where they fall,
Sleep. 'On!' the road uncoils its length;
Hamlets and towns we pass them all.
False dawn declares night nearly gone:
We win the twentieth mile by theft.
We're charmed together, hounded on,
By the strong beat of left, right, left.
Pale skies and hunger: drizzled rain:
The men with stout hearts help the weak,
Add a new rifle to their pain
Of shoulder, stride on, never speak.
We win the twenty-third by pride:
My neighbour's face is chalky white.
Red dawn: a mocking voice inside
'New every morning', 'Fight the good fight'.
Now at the top of a rounded hill
We see brick buildings and church spires.
Nearer they loom and nearer, till
We know the billet of our desires.
Here the march ends, somehow we know.
The step quickens, the rifles rise
To attention: up the hill we go
Shamming new vigour for French eyes.
So now most cheerily we step down
The street, scarcely withholding tears
Of weariness: so stir the town
With all the triumph of Fusiliers.
Breakfast to cook, billets to find,
Scrub up and wash (down comes the rain),
And the dark thought in every mind
'To-night they'll march us on again.'



 Nursery Memories

I.---THE FIRST FUNERAL 
(The first corpse I saw was on the German wires, and couldn't be buried)
The whole field was so smelly;
We smelt the poor dog first:
His horrid swollen belly
Looked just like going burst.
His fur was most untidy;
He hadn't any eyes.
It happened on Good Friday
And there was lots of flies.
And then I felt the coldest
I'd ever felt, and sick,
But Rose, 'cause she's the oldest,
Dared poke him with her stick.
He felt quite soft and horrid:
The flies buzzed round his head
And settled on his forehead:
Rose whispered: 'That dog's dead.
'You bury all dead people,
When they're quite really dead,
Round churches with a steeple:
Let's bury this,' Rose said.
'And let's put mint all round it
To hide the nasty smell.'
I went to look and found it---
Lots, growing near the well.
We poked him through the clover
Into a hole, and then
We threw brown earth right over
And said: 'Poor dog, Amen!'
II.---THE ADVENTURE 
(Suggested by the claim of a machine-gun team to have annihilated an enemy wire party: no bodies were found however)
To-day I killed a tiger near my shack
Among the trees: at least, it must have been,
Because his hide was yellow, striped with black,
And his eyes were green.
I crept up close and slung a pointed stone
With all my might: I must have hit his head,
For there he died without a twitch or groan,
And he lay there dead.
I expect that he'd escaped from a Wild Beast Show
By pulling down his cage with an angry tear;
He'd killed and wounded all the people---so
He was hiding there.
I brought my brother up as quick's I could
But there was nothing left when he did come:
The tiger's mate was watching in the wood
And she'd dragged him home.
But, anyhow, I killed him by the shack,
'Cause---listen!---when we hunted in the wood
My brother found my pointed stone all black
With the clotted blood.
III.---I HATE THE MOON 
(After a moonlight patrol near the Brickstacks)
I hate the Moon, though it makes most people glad,
And they giggle and talk of silvery beams---you know!
But she says the look of the Moon drives people mad,
And that's the thing that always frightens me so.
I hate it worst when it's cruel and round and bright,
And you can't make out the marks on its stupid face,
Except when you shut your eyelashes, and all night
The sky looks green, and the world's a horrible place.
I like the stars, and especially the Big Bear
And the W star, and one like a diamond ring,
But I hate the Moon and its horrible stony stare,
And I know one day it'll do me some dreadful thing.



 Oh, And Oh!  	Oh, and oh!
The world's a muddle,
The clouds are untidy,
Moon lopsidey,
Shining in a puddle.
Down dirty streets in stench and smoke
The pale townsfolk
Crawl and kiss and cuddle,
In doorways hug and huddle;
Loutish he
And sluttish she
In loathsome love together press
And unbelievable ugliness.
These spiders spin a loathly woof!
I walk aloof,
Head burning and heart snarling,
Tread feverish quick;
My love is sick;
Far away lives my darling.



 On Finding Myself A Soldier

 
My bud was backward to unclose,
A pretty baby-queen,
Furled petal-tips of creamy rose
Caught in a clasp of green.
Somehow, I never thought to doubt
That when her heart should show
She would be coloured in as out,
Like the flush of dawn on snow:
But yesterday aghast I found,
Where last I'd left the bud,
Twelve flamy petals ringed around
A heart more red than blood.



 Outlaws

 
Owls---they whinny down the night;
Bats go zigzag by.
Ambushed in shadow beyond sight
The outlaws lie.
Old gods, tamed to silence, there
In the wet woods they lurk,
Greedy of human stuff to snare
In nets of murk.
Look up, else your eye will drown
In a moving sea of black;
Between the tree-tops, upside down,
Goes the sky-track.
Look up, else your feet will stray
Into that ambuscade
Where spider-like they trap their prey
With webs of shade.
For though creeds whirl away in dust,
Faith dies and men forget,
These agèd gods of power and lust
Cling to life yet---
Old gods almost dead, malign,
Starving for unpaid dues:
Incense and fire, salt, blood and wine
And a drumming muse,
Banished to woods and a sickly moon,
Shrunk to mere bogey things,
Who spoke with thunder once at noon
To prostrate kings:
With thunder from an open sky
To warrior, virgin, priest,
Bowing in fear with a dazzled eye
Toward the dread East---
Proud gods, humbled, sunk so low,
Living with ghosts and ghouls,
And ghosts of ghosts and last year's snow
And dead toadstools.



 Over The Brazier

 
What life to lead and where to go
After the War, after the War?
We'd often talked this way before.
But I still see the brazier glow
That April night, still feel the smoke
And stifling pungency of burning coke.
I'd thought: 'A cottage in the hills,
North Wales, a cottage full of books,
Pictures and brass and cosy nooks
And comfortable broad window-sills,
Flowers in the garden, walls all white.
I'd live there peacefully and dream and write.'
But Willie said: 'No, Home's no good:
Old England's quite a hopeless place,
I've lost all feeling for my race:
But France has given my heart and blood
Enough to last me all my life,
I'm off to Canada with my wee wife.
'Come with us, Mac, old thing,' but Mac
Drawled: 'No, a Coral Isle for me,
A warm green jewel in the South Sea.
There's merit in a lumber shack,
And labour is a grand thing...but---
Give me my hot beach and my cocoanut.'
So then we built and stocked for Willie
His log-hut, and for Mac a calm
Rock-a-bye cradle on a palm---
Idyllic dwellings---but this silly
Mad War has now wrecked both, and what
Better hopes has my little cottage got?



 Peace

 
When that glad day shall break to match
'Before-the-War' with 'Since-the-Peace',
And up I climb to twist new thatch
Across my cottage roof, while geese
Stand stiffly there below and vex
The yard with hissing from long necks,
In that immense release,
That shining day, shall we hear said:
'New wars to-morrow, more men dead'?
When peace time comes and horror's over,
Despair and darkness like a dream,
When fields are ripe with corn and clover,
The cool white dairy full of cream,
Shall we work happily in the sun,
And think 'It's over now and done',
Or suddenly shall we seem
To watch a second bristling shadow
Of armed men move across the meadow?
Will it be over once for all,
With no more killed and no more maimed;
Shall we be safe from terror's thrall,
The eagle caged, the lion tamed;
Or will the young of that vile brood,
The young ones also, suck up blood
Unconquered, unashamed,
Rising again with lust and thirst?
Better we all had died at first,
Better that killed before our prime
We rotted deep in earthy slime.



 Poetic Injustice

 
A Scottish fighting man whose wife
Turned false and tempted his best friend,
Finding no future need for life
Resolved he'd win a famous end.
Bayonet and bomb this wild man took,
And Death in every shell-hole sought,
Yet there Death only made him hook
To dangle bait that others caught.
A hundred German wives soon owed
Their widows' weeds to this one man
Who also guided down Death's road
Scores of the Scots of his own clan.
Seventeen wounds he got in all
And jingling medals four or five.
Often in trenches at night-fall
He was the one man left alive.
But fickle wife and paramour
Were strangely visited from above,
Were lightning-struck at their own door
About the third week of their love.
'Well, well' you say, man wife and friend
Ended as quits' but I say not:
While that false pair met a clean end
Without remorse, how fares the Scot?



 Return

 
'Farewell,' the Corporal cried, 'La Bassée trenches!
No Cambrins for me now, no more Givenchies,
And no more bloody brickstacks---God Almighty,
I'm back again at last to dear old Blighty.'
But cushy wounds don't last a man too long,
And now, poor lad, he sings this bitter song:
'Back to La Bassée, to the same old hell,
Givenchy, Cuinchey, Cambrin, Loos, Vermelles.'



 Sergeant-Major Money


It wasn't our battalion, but we lay alongside it,
So the story is as true as the telling is frank.
They hadn't one Line-officer left, after Arras,
Except a batty major and the Colonel, who drank.
'B' Company Commander was fresh from the Depôt,
An expert on gas drill, otherwise a dud;
So Sergeant-Major Money carried on, as instructed,
And that's where the swaddies began to sweat blood.
His Old Army humour was so well-spiced and hearty
That one poor sod shot himself, and one lost his wits;
But discipline's maintained, and back in rest-billets
The Colonel congratulates 'B' Company on their kits.
The subalterns went easy, as was only natural
With a terror like Money driving the machine,
Till finally two Welshmen, butties from the Rhondda,
Bayoneted their bugbear in a field-canteen.
Well, we couldn't blame the officers, they relied on Money;
We couldn't blame the pitboys, their courage was grand;
Or, least of all, blame Money, an old stiff surviving
In a New (bloody) Army he couldn't understand.



 Smoke-Rings

Boy:
Most venerable and learned sir,
Tall and true Philosopher,
These rings of smoke you blow all day
With such deep thought, what sense have they?
Philosopher:
Small friend, with prayer and meditation
I make an image of Creation.
And if your mind is working nimble
Straightway you'll recognize a symbol
Of the endless and eternal ring
Of God, who girdles everything---
God, who in His own form and plan
Moulds the fugitive life of man.
These vaporous toys you watch me make,
That shoot ahead, pause, turn and break---
Some glide far out like sailing ships,
Some weak ones fail me at my lips.
He who ringed His awe in smoke,
When He led forth His captive folk,
In like manner, East, West, North, and South,
Blows us ring-wise from His mouth.



 Sorley'S Weather

 
When outside the icy rain
Comes leaping helter-skelter,
Shall I tie my restive brain
Snugly under shelter?
Shall I make a gentle song
Here in my firelit study,
When outside the winds blow strong
And the lanes are muddy?
With old wine and drowsy meats
Am I to fill my belly?
Shall I glutton here with Keats?
Shall I drink with Shelley?
Tobacco's pleasant, firelight's good:
Poetry makes both better.
Clay is wet and so is mud,
Winter rains are wetter.
Yet rest there, Shelley, on the sill,
For though the winds come frorely
I'm away to the rain-blown hill
And the ghost of Sorley.



 Sospan Fach
(The Little Saucepan)


Four collier lads from Ebbw Vale
Took shelter from a shower of hail,
And there beneath a spreading tree
Attuned their mouths to harmony.
With smiling joy on every face
Two warbled tenor, two sang bass,
And while the leaves above them hissed with
Rough hail, they started 'Aberystwyth'.
Old Parry's hymn, triumphant, rich,
They chanted through with even pitch,
Till at the end of their grand noise
I called: 'Give us the Sospan boys!'
Who knows a tune so soft, so strong,
So pitiful as that 'Saucepan' song
For exiled hope, despaired desire
Of lost souls for their cottage fire?
Then low at first with gathering sound
Rose their four voices, smooth and round,
Till back went Time: once more I stood
With Fusiliers in Mametz Wood.
Fierce burned the sun, yet cheeks were pale,
For ice hail they had leaden hail;
In that fine forest, green and big,
There stayed unbroken not one twig.
They sang, they swore, they plunged in haste,
Stumbling and shouting through the waste;
The little 'Saucepan' flamed on high,
Emblem of hope and ease gone by.
Rough pit-boys from the coaly South,
They sang, even in the cannon's mouth;
Like Sunday's chapel, Monday's inn,
The death-trap sounded with their din.
The storm blows over, Sun comes out,
The choir breaks up with jest and shout,
With what relief I watch them part---
Another note would break my heart!



 Star-Talk

 
'Are you awake, Gemelli,
This frosty night?'
'We'll be awake till reveillé,
Which is Sunrise,' say the Gemelli,
'It's no good trying to go to sleep:
If there's wine to be got we'll drink it deep,
But sleep is gone for to-night,
But sleep is gone for to-night.'
'Are you cold too, poor Pleiads,
This frosty night?'
'Yes, and so are the Hyads:
See us cuddle and hug,' say the Pleiads,
'All six in a ring: it keeps us warm:
We huddle together like birds in a storm:
It's bitter weather to-night,
It's bitter weather to-night.'
'What do you hunt, Orion,
This starry night?'
'The Ram, the Bull and the Lion,
And the Great Bear,' says Orion,
'With my starry quiver and beautiful belt
I am trying to find a good thick pelt
To warm my shoulders to-night,
To warm my shoulders to-night.'
'Did you hear that, Great She-bear,
This frosty night?'
'Yes, he's talking of stripping me bare
Of my own big fur,' says the She-bear,
'I'm afraid of the man and his terrible arrow:
The thought of it chills my bones to the marrow,
And the frost so cruel to-night!
And the frost so cruel to-night!'
'How is your trade, Aquarius,
This frosty night?'
'Complaints is many and various
And my feet are cold,' says Aquarius,
'There's Venus objects to Dolphin-scales,
And Mars to Crab-spawn found in my pails,
And the pump has frozen to-night,
And the pump has frozen to-night.'



 Strong Beer

 
'What do you think
The bravest drink
Under the sky?'
'Strong beer,' said I.
'There's a place for everything,
Everything, anything,
There's a place for everything
Where it ought to be:
For a chicken, the hen's wing;
For poison, the bee's sting;
For almond-blossom, Spring;
A beerhouse for me.
'There's a prize for everyone,
Everyone, anyone,
There's a prize for everyone,
Whoever he may be:
Crags for the mountaineer,
Flags for the Fusilier,
For all good fellows, beer!
Strong beer for me!'
'Tell us, now, how and when
We may find the bravest men?'
'A sure test, an easy test:
Those that drink beer are the best,
Brown beer strongly brewed,
Plain man's drink, plain man's food.'
Oh, never choose as Gideon chose
By the cold well, but rather those
Who look on beer when it is brown,
Smack their lips and gulp it down.
Leave the lads who tamely drink
With Gideon by the water brink,
But search the benches of the Plough,
The Tun, the Sun, the Spotted Cow,
For jolly rascal lads who pray,
Pewter in hand, at close of day,
'Teach me to live that I may fear
The grave as little as my beer.'



 The Alice Jean

 
One moonlit night a ship drove in,
A ghost ship from the west,
Drifting with bare mast and lone tiller,
Like a mermaid drest
In long green weed and barnacles:
She beached and came to rest.
All the watchers of the coast
Flocked to view the sight,
Men and women streaming down
Through the summer night,
Found her standing tall and ragged
Beached in the moonlight.
Then one old woman looked and wept:
'The Alice Jean? But no!
The ship that took my Dick from me
Sixty years ago
Drifted back from the utmost west
With the ocean's flow?
'Caught and caged in the weedy pool
Beyond the western brink,
Where crewless vessels lie and rot
In waters black as ink,
Torn out again by a sudden storm---
Is it the Jean, you think?'
A hundred women stared agape,
The menfolk nudged and laughed,
But none could find a likelier story
For the strange craft
With fear and death and desolation
Rigged fore and aft.
The blind ship came forgotten home
To all but one of these
Of whom none dared to climb aboard her:
And by and by the breeze
Sprang to a storm and the Alice Jean
Foundered in frothy seas.



 'The Assault Heroic'

Down in the mud I lay,
Tired out by my long day
Of five damned days and nights,
Five sleepless days and nights,...
Dream snatched, and set me where
The dungeon of Despair
Looms over Desolate Sea,
Frowning and threatening me
With aspect high and steep---
A most malignant keep.
My foes that lay within
Shouted and made a din,
Hooted and grinned and cried:
'To-day we've killed your pride;
To-day your ardour ends.
We've murdered all your friends;
We've undermined by stealth
Your happiness and your health.
We've taken away your hope;
Now you may droop and mope
To misery and to death.'
But with my spear of faith,
Stout as an oaken rafter,
With my round shield of laughter,
With my sharp, tongue-like sword
That speaks a bitter word,
I stood beneath the wall
And there defied them all.
The stones they cast I caught
And alchemized with thought
Into such lumps of gold
As dreaming misers hold.
The boiling oil they threw
Fell in a shower of dew,
Refreshing me; the spears
Flew harmless by my ears,
Struck quivering in the sod;
There, like the prophet's rod,
Put leaves out, took firm root,
And bore me instant fruit.
My foes were all astounded,
Dumbstricken and confounded,
Gaping in a long row;
They dared not thrust nor throw.
Thus, then, I climbed a steep
Buttress and won the keep,
And laughed and proudly blew
My horn, 'Stand to! Stand to!
Wake up, sir! Here's a new
Attack! Stand to! Stand to!'



 The Boy Out Of Church

 
As Jesus and his followers
Upon a Sabbath morn
Were walking by a wheat field
They plucked the ears of corn.
They plucked it, they rubbed it,
They blew the husks away,
Which grieved the pious Pharisees
Upon the Sabbath day.
And Jesus said, 'A riddle
Answer if you can,
Was man made for the Sabbath
Or Sabbath made for man?'
I do not love the Sabbath,
The soapsuds and the starch,
The troops of solemn people
Who to Salvation march.
I take my book, I take my stick
On the Sabbath day,
In woody nooks and valleys
I hide myself away,
To ponder there in quiet
God's Universal Plan,
Resolved that church and Sabbath
Were never made for man.



 The Caterpillar

 
Under this loop of honeysuckle,
A creeping, coloured caterpillar,
I gnaw the fresh green hawthorn spray,
I nibble it leaf by leaf away.
Down beneath grow dandelions,
Daisies, old-man's-looking-glasses;
Rooks flap croaking across the lane.
I eat and swallow and eat again.
Here come raindrops helter-skelter;
I munch and nibble unregarding:
Hawthorn leaves are juicy and firm.
I'll mind my business: I'm a good worm.
When I'm old, tired, melancholy,
I'll build a leaf-green mausoleum
Close by, here on this lovely spray,
And die and dream the ages away.
Some say worms win resurrection,
With white wings beating flitter-flutter,
But wings or a sound sleep, why should I care?
Either way I'll not miss my share.
Under this loop of honeysuckle,
A hungry, hairy caterpillar,
I crawl on my high and swinging seat,
And eat, eat, eat---as one ought to eat.



 The Cottage

 
Here in turn succeed and rule
Carter, smith, and village fool,
Then again the place is known
As tavern, shop, and Sunday-school;
Now somehow it's come to me
To light the fire and hold the key,
Here in Heaven to reign alone.
All the walls are white with lime,
Big blue periwinkles climb
And kiss the crumbling window-sill;
Snug inside I sit and rhyme,
Planning poem, book, or fable,
At my darling beech-wood table
Fresh with bluebells from the hill.
Through the window I can see
Rooks above the cherry-tree,
Sparrows in the violet bed,
Bramble-bush and bumble-bee,
And old red bracken smoulders still
Among boulders on the hill,
Far too bright to seem quite dead.
But old Death, who can't forget,
Waits his time and watches yet,
Waits and watches by the door.
Look, he's got a great new net,
And when my fighting starts afresh
Stouter cord and smaller mesh
Won't be cheated as before.
Nor can kindliness of Spring,
Flowers that smile nor birds that sing,
Bumble-bee nor butterfly,
Nor grassy hill nor anything
Of magic keep me safe to rhyme
In this Heaven beyond my time.
No! for Death is waiting by.



 The Cruel Moon

The cruel Moon hangs out of reach
Up above the shadowy beech.
Her face is stupid, but her eye
Is small and sharp and very sly.
Nurse says the Moon can drive you mad?
No, that's a silly story, lad!
Though she be angry, though she would
Destroy all England if she could,
Yet think, what damage can she do
Hanging there so far from you?
Don't heed what frightened nurses say:
Moons hang much too far away.



 The Cuirassiers Of The Frontier

 
Goths, Vandals, Huns, Isaurian mountaineers,
Made Roman by our Roman sacrament,
We can know little (as we care little)
Of the Metropolis: her candled churches,
Her white-gowned pederastic senators,
The cut-throat factions of her Hippodrome,
The eunuchs of her draped saloons.
Here is the frontier, here our camp and place---
Beans for the pot, fodder for horses,
And Roman arms. Enough. He who among us
At full gallop, the bowstring to his ear,
Lets drive his heavy arrows, to sink
Stinging through Persian corslets damascened,
Then follows with the lance---he has our love.
The Christ bade Holy Peter sheathe his sword,
Being outnumbered by the Temple guard.
And this was prudence, the cause not yet lost
While Peter might persuade the crowd to rescue.
Peter renegued, breaking his sacrament.
With us the penalty is death by stoning,
Not to be made a bishop.
In Peter's Church there is no faith nor truth,
Nor justice anywhere in palace or court.
That we continue watchful on the rampart
Concerns no priest. A gaping silken dragon,
Puffed by the wind, suffices us for God.
We, not the City, are the Empire's soul:
A rotten tree lives only in its rind.



 The Dead Fox Hunter

 
(In memory of Captain A. L. Samson, 2nd Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers, killed near Cuinchy, Sept. 25th, 1915)
We found the little captain at the head;
His men lay well aligned.
We touched his hand---stone cold---and he was dead,
And they, all dead behind,
Had never reached their goal, but they died well;
They charged in line, and in the same line fell.
The well-known rosy colours of his face
Were almost lost in grey.
We saw that, dying and in hopeless case,
For others' sake that day
He'd smothered all rebellious groans: in death
His fingers were tight clenched between his teeth.
For those who live uprightly and die true
Heaven has no bars or locks,
And serves all taste...or what's for him to do
Up there, but hunt the fox?
Angelic choirs? No, Justice must provide
For one who rode straight and in hunting died.
So if Heaven had no Hunt before he came,
Why, it must find one now:
If any shirk and doubt they know the game,
There's one to teach them how:
And the whole host of Seraphim complete
Must jog in scarlet to his opening Meet.



 The Dying Knight And The Fauns

 
Through the dreams of yesternight
My blood brother great in fight
I saw lying, slowly dying
Where the weary woods were sighing
With the rustle of the birches,
With the quiver of the larches ...
Woodland fauns with hairy haunches
Grin in wonder through the branches,
Woodland fauns who know not fear:
Wondering they wander near,
Munching mushrooms red as coral,
Bunches, too, of rue and sorrel,
With uncouth and bestial sounds,
Knowing naught of war and wounds.
But the crimson life-blood oozes
And makes roses of the daisies,
Persian carpets of the mosses---
Softly now his spirit passes
As the bee forsakes the lily,
As the berry leaves the holly;
But the fauns still think him living,
And with bay leaves they are weaving
Crowns to deck him. Well they may!
He was worthy of the Bay.



 The Enlisted Man

From STEPS
 
Yelled Corporal Punishment at Private Reasons:
'Rebels like you have no right to enlist---
Or to exist!'
Major Considerations leered approval,
Clenching his fist,
And gave his fierce moustache a fiercer twist.
So no appeal, even to General Conscience,
Kept Private Reasons' name off the defaulter-list.



 The Face Of The Heavens

 
Little winds in a hurry,
Great winds over the sky,
Clouds sleek or furry,
Storms that rage and die,
The whole cycle of weather
From calm to hurricane
Of four gales wroth together,
Thunder, lightning, rain,
The burning sun, snowing,
Hailstones pattering down,
Blue skies and red skies showing,
Skies with a black frown,
By these signs and wonders
You may tell God's mood:
He shines, rains, thunders,
But all His works are good.



 The Field-Postcard

475 Graves (Robert) AUTOGRAPH POSTCARD signed (written in pencil), 1.R.W.Fus. B.E.F. Nov 27, '15 to Edward Marsh, autograph address panel on verso signed, Post Office and Censor's postmarks £30
'In the last few days I've been made a captain and shifted here. I won't get any leave till January at the earliest...'
Back in '15, when life was harsh
And blood was hourly shed,
I reassured Sir Edward Marsh
So far I was not dead.
My field-postcard duly arrived,
It seems, at Gray's Inn Square
Where Eddie, glad I still survived,
Ruffled his thinning hair ...
A full half century out of sight
It lay securely hid
Till Francis Edwards with delight
Sold it for thirty quid.
But who retained the copyright,
The invaluable copyright?
In common law I did.



 The God Called Poetry

 
Now I begin to know at last,
These nights when I sit down to rhyme,
The form and measure of that vast
God we call Poetry, he who stoops
And leaps me through his paper hoops
A little higher every time.
Tempts me to think I'll grow a proper
Singing cricket or grass-hopper
Making prodigious jumps in air
While shaken crowds about me stare
Aghast, and I sing, growing bolder
To fly up on my master's shoulder
Rustling the thick strands of his hair.
He is older than the seas,
Older than the plains and hills,
And older than the light that spills
From the sun's hot wheel on these.
He wakes the gale that tears your trees,
He sings to you from window sills.
At you he roars, or he will coo,
He shouts and screams when hell is hot,
Riding on the shell and shot.
He smites you down, he succours you,
And where you seek him, he is not.
To-day I see he has two heads
Like Janus---calm, benignant, this;
That, grim and scowling: his beard spreads
From chin to chin: this god has power
Immeasurable at every hour:
He first taught lovers how to kiss,
He brings down sunshine after shower,
Thunder and hate are his also,
He is YES and he is NO.
The black beard spoke and said to me,
'Human frailty though you be,
Yet shout and crack your whip, be harsh!
They'll obey you in the end:
Hill and field, river and marsh
Shall obey you, hop and skip
At the terrour of your whip,
To your gales of anger bend.'
The pale beard spoke and said in turn
'True: a prize goes to the stern,
But sing and laugh and easily run
Through the wide airs of my plain,
Bathe in my waters, drink my sun,
And draw my creatures with soft song;
They shall follow you along
Graciously with no doubt or pain.'
Then speaking from his double head
The glorious fearful monster said
'I am YES and I am NO,
Black as pitch and white as snow,
Love me, hate me, reconcile
Hate with love, perfect with vile,
So equal justice shall be done
And life shared between moon and sun.
Nature for you shall curse or smile:
A poet you shall be, my son.'



 The Legion

 
'Is that the Three-and-Twentieth, Strabo mine,
Marching below, and we still gulping wine?'
From the sad magic of his fragrant cup
The red-faced old centurion started up,
Cursed, battered on the table. 'No,' he said,
'Not that! The Three-and-Twentieth Legion's dead,
Dead in the first year of this damned campaign---
The Legion's dead, dead, and won't rise again.
Pity? Rome pities her brave lads that die,
But we need pity also, you and I,
Whom Gallic spear and Belgian arrow miss,
Who live to see the Legion come to this:
Unsoldierlike, slovenly, bent on loot,
Grumblers, diseased, unskilled to thrust or shoot.
O brown cheek, muscled shoulder, sturdy thigh!
Where are they now? God! watch it straggle by,
The sullen pack of ragged, ugly swine!
Is that the Legion, Gracchus? Quick, the wine!'
'Strabo,' said Gracchus, 'you are strange to-night.
The Legion is the Legion, it's all right.
If these new men are slovenly, in your thinking,
Hell take it! you'll not better them by drinking.
They all try, Strabo; trust their hearts and hands.
The Legion is the Legion while Rome stands,
And these same men before the autumn's fall
Shall bang old Vercingetorix out of Gaul.'



 The Leveller

 
Near Martinpuisch that night of hell
Two men were struck by the same shell,
Together tumbling in one heap
Senseless and limp like slaughtered sheep.
One was a pale eighteen-year-old,
Blue-eyed and thin and not too bold,
Pressed for the war ten years too soon,
The shame and pity of his platoon.
The other came from far-off lands
With bristling chin and whiskered hands,
He had known death and hell before
In Mexico and Ecuador.
Yet in his death this cut-throat wild
Groaned 'Mother! Mother!' like a child,
While that poor innocent in man's clothes
Died cursing God with brutal oaths.
Old Sergeant Smith, kindest of men,
Wrote out two copies there and then
Of his accustomed funeral speech
To cheer the womenfolk of each:---
'He died a hero's death: and we
His comrades of A Company
Deeply regret his death; we shall
All deeply miss so true a pal.'



 The Morning Before The Battle

To-day, the fight: my end is very soon,
And sealed the warrant limiting my hours:
I knew it walking yesterday at noon
Down a deserted garden full of flowers.
...Carelessly sang, pinned roses on my breast,
Reached for a cherry-bunch---and then, then, Death
Blew through the garden from the North and East
And blighted every beauty with chill breath.
I looked, and ah, my wraith before me stood,
His head all battered in by violent blows:
The fruit between my lips to clotted blood
Was transubstantiate, and the pale rose
Smelt sickly, till it seemed through a swift tear-flood
That dead men blossomed in the garden-close.



 The Next War

 
You young friskies who to-day
Jump and fight in Father's hay
With bows and arrows and wooden spears,
Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers,
Happy though these hours you spend,
Have they warned you how games end?
Boys, from the first time you prod
And thrust with spears of curtain-rod,
From the first time you tear and slash
Your long-bows from the garden ash,
Or fit your shaft with a blue jay feather,
Binding the split tops together,
From that same hour by fate you're bound
As champions of this stony ground,
Loyal and true in everything,
To serve your Army and your King,
Prepared to starve and sweat and die
Under some fierce foreign sky,
If only to keep safe those joys
That belong to British boys,
To keep young Prussians from the soft
Scented hay of Father's loft,
And stop young Slavs from cutting bows
And bendy spears from Welsh hedgerows.
Another War soon gets begun,
A dirtier, a more glorious one;
Then, boys, you'll have to play, all in;
It's the cruellest team will win.
So hold your nose against the stink
And never stop too long to think.
Wars don't change except in name;
The next one must go just the same,
And new foul tricks unguessed before
Will win and justify this War.
Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage
Once more with pomp and greed and rage;
Courtly ministers will stop
At home and fight to the last drop;
By the million men will die
In some new horrible agony;
And children here will thrust and poke,
Shoot and die, and laugh at the joke,
With bows and arrows and wooden spears,
Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers.



 The Oldest Soldier

The sun shines warm on seven old soldiers
Paraded in a row,
Perched like starlings on the railings---
Give them plug-tobacco!
They'll croon you the Oldest-Soldier Song:
Of Harry who took a holiday
From the sweat of ever thinking for himself
Or going his own bloody way.
It was arms-drill, guard and kit-inspection,
Like dreams of a long train-journey,
And the barrack-bed that Harry dossed on
Went rockabye, rockabye, rockabye.
Harry kept his rifle and brasses clean,
But Jesus Christ, what a liar!
He won the Military Medal
For his coolness under fire.
He was never the last on parade
Nor the first to volunteer,
And when Harry rose to be storeman
He seldom had to pay for his beer.
Twenty-one years, and out Harry came
To be odd-job man, or janitor,
Or commissionaire at a picture-house,
Or, some say, bully to a whore.
But his King and Country calling Harry,
He reported again at the Depôt,
To perch on this railing like a starling,
The oldest soldier of the row.



 The Picture Book

 
When I was not quite five years old
I first saw the blue picture book,
And Fräulein Spitzenburger told
Stories that sent me hot and cold;
I loathed it, yet I had to look:
It was a German book.
I smiled at first, for she'd begun
With a back-garden broad and green,
And rabbits nibbling there: page one
Turned; and the gardener fired his gun
From the low hedge: he lay unseen
Behind: oh, it was mean!
They're hurt, they can't escape, and so
He stuffs them head-down in a sack,
Not quite dead, wriggling in a row,
And Fräulein laughed, 'Ho, ho! Ho, ho!'
And gave my middle a hard smack.
I wish that I'd hit back.
Then when I cried she laughed again;
On the next page was a dead boy
Murdered by robbers in a lane;
His clothes were red with a big stain
Of blood, he held a broken toy,
The poor, poor little boy!
I had to look: there was a town
Burning where every one got caught,
Then a fish pulled a nigger down
Into the lake and made him drown,
And a man killed his friend; they fought
For money, Fräulein thought.
Old Fräulein laughed, a horrid noise.
'Ho, ho!' Then she explained it all.
How robbers kill the little boys
And torture them and break their toys.
Robbers are always big and tall:
I cried: I was so small.
How a man often kills his wife,
How every one dies in the end
By fire, or water or a knife.
If you're not careful in this life,
Even if you can trust your friend,
You won't have long to spend.
I hated it---old Fräulein picked
Her teeth, slowly explaining it.
I had to listen, Fräulein licked
Her fingers several times and flicked
The pages over; in a fit
Of rage I spat at it...
And lying in my bed that night
Hungry, tired out with sobs, I found
A stretch of barren years in sight,
Where right is wrong, but strength is right,
Where weak things must creep underground,
And I could not sleep sound.



 The Poet In The Nursery

The youngest poet down the shelves was fumbling
In a dim library, just behind the chair
From which the ancient poet was mum-mumbling
A song about some lovers at a Fair,
Pulling his long white beard and gently grumbling
That rhymes were troublesome things and never there.
And as I groped, the whole time I was thinking
About the tragic poem I'd been writing,...
An old man's life of beer and whisky drinking,
His years of kidnapping and wicked fighting;
And how at last, into a fever sinking,
Remorsefully he died, his bedclothes biting.
But suddenly I saw the bright green cover
Of a thin pretty book right down below;
I snatched it up and turned the pages over,
To find it full of poetry, and so
Put it down my neck with quick hands like a lover,
And turned to watch if the old man saw it go.
The book was full of funny muddling mazes,
Each rounded off into a lovely song,
And most extraordinary and monstrous phrases
Knotted with rhymes like a slave-driver's thong,
And metre twisting like a chain of daisies
With great big splendid words a sentence long.
I took the book to bed with me and gloated,
Learning the lines that seemed to sound most grand;
So soon the lively emerald green was coated
With intimate dark stains from my hot hand,
While round the nursery for long months there floated
Wonderful words no one could understand.



 The Shadow Of Death

 
Here's an end to my art!
I must die and I know it,
With battle murder at my heart---
Sad death for a poet!
Oh my songs never sung,
And my plays to darkness blown!
I am still so young, so young,
And life was my own.
Some bad fairy stole
The baby I nursed:
Was this my pretty little soul,
This changeling accursed?
To fight and kill is wrong---
To stay at home wronger:
Oh soul, little play and song,
I may father no longer!
Here's an end to my art!
I must die and I know it,
With battle murder at my heart---
Sad death for a poet!



 The Shivering Beggar

Near Clapham village, where fields began,
Saint Edward met a beggar man.
It was Christmas morning, the church bells tolled,
The old man trembled for the fierce cold.
Saint Edward cried, 'It is monstrous sin
A beggar to lie in rags so thin!
An old grey-beard and the frost so keen:
I shall give him my fur-lined gaberdine.'
He stripped off his gaberdine of scarlet
And wrapped it round the aged varlet,
Who clutched at the folds with a muttered curse,
Quaking and chattering seven times worse.
Said Edward, 'Sir, it would seem you freeze
Most bitter at your extremities.
Here are gloves and shoes and stockings also,
That warm upon your way you may go.'
The man took stocking and shoe and glove,
Blaspheming Christ our Saviour's love,
Yet seemed to find but little relief,
Shaking and shivering like a leaf.
Said the saint again, 'I have no great riches,
Yet take this tunic, take these breeches,
My shirt and my vest, take everything,
And give due thanks to Jesus the King.'
The saint stood naked upon the snow
Long miles from where he was lodged at Bowe,
Praying, 'O God! my faith, it grows faint!
This would try the temper of any saint.
'Make clean my heart, Almighty, I pray,
And drive these sinful thoughts away.
Make clean my heart if it be Thy will,
This damned old rascal's shivering still!'
He stooped, he touched the beggar man's shoulder;
He asked him did the frost nip colder?
'Frost!' said the beggar, 'no, stupid lad!
'Tis the palsy makes me shiver so bad.'



 The Spoilsport

My familiar ghost again
Comes to see what he can see,
Critic, son of Conscious Brain,
Spying on our privacy.
Slam the window, bolt the door,
Yet he'll enter in and stay;
In to-morrow's book he'll score
Indiscretions of to-day.
Whispered love and muttered fears,
How their echoes fly about!
None escape his watchful ears,
Every sigh might be a shout.
No kind words nor angry cries
Turn away this grim spoilsport;
No fine lady's pleading eyes,
Neither love, nor hate, nor ...port.
Critic wears no smile of fun,
Speaks no word of blame nor praise,
Counts our kisses one by one,
Notes each gesture, every phrase.
My familiar ghost again
Stands or squats where suits him best;
Critic, son of Conscious Brain,
Listens, watches, takes no rest.



 The Stepmother And The Princess

 
Through fogs and magic spells
All day I've guided you,
Through loud alarms and yells,
Through scent of wizard stew,
Through midday pools of dew,
Through crowds that moan and mock,
Ogres at human feast,
Blood-streams and battleshock,
Past phantom bird and beast,
Monsters of West and East.
But this calm wood is hedged
With the set shape of things;
Here is no phoenix fledged,
No gryphon flaps his wings,
No dragons wave their stings.
Nothing is here that harms,
No toothed or spiny grass,
No tree whose clutching arms
Drink blood when travellers pass,
No poison-breathed Upas.
Instead the lawns are soft,
The tree-stems grave and old:
Slow branches sway aloft,
The evening air comes cold,
The sunset scatters gold.
Nay, there's no hidden lair
For tigers or for apes,
No dread of wolf or bear,
No ghouls, no goblin shapes,
No witches clad in capes.
My cloak, my ermine cloak,
Shall keep you warm and dry;
Branches of elm I've broke
To roof you as you lie
Below the winking sky.
Sleep now and think no ill,
No evil soul comes near.
The dreamy woods are still,
Sigh, sleep, forget your fear,
Sleep soundly, sleep, my dear.



 The Survivor

 
To die with a forlorn hope, but soon to be raised
By hags, the spoilers of the field, to elude their claws
And stand once more on a well-swept parade-ground,
Scarred and bemedalled, sword upright in fist
At head of a new undaunted company:
Is this joy?---to be doubtless alive again,
And the others dead? Will your nostrils gladly savour
The fragrance, always new, of a first hedge-rose?
Will your ears be charmed by the thrush's melody
Sung as though he had himself devised it?
And is this joy: after the double suicide
(Heart against heart) to be restored entire,
To smooth your hair and wash away the life-blood,
And presently seek a young and innocent bride,
Whispering in the dark: 'for ever and ever'?



 The Survivor Comes Home

 
Despair and doubt in the blood:
Autumn, a smell rotten-sweet:
What stirs in the drenching wood?
What drags at my heart, my feet?
What stirs in the wood?
Nothing stirs, nothing cries.
Run weasel, cry bird for me,
Comfort my ears, soothe my eyes!
Horror on ground, over tree!
Nothing calls, nothing flies.
Once in a blasted wood,
A shrieking fevered waste,
We jeered at Death where he stood:
I jeered, I too had a taste
Of Death in the wood.
Am I alive and the rest
Dead, all dead? sweet friends
With the sun they have journeyed west;
For me now night never ends,
A night without rest.
Death, your revenge is ripe.
Spare me! but can Death spare?
Must I leap, howl to your pipe
Because I denied you there?
Your vengeance is ripe.
Death, ay, terror of Death:
If I laughed at you, scorned you, now
You flash in my eyes, choke my breath ...
'Safe home.' Safe? Twig and bough
Drip, drip, drip with Death!



 The Trenches
(Heard In The Ranks)

Scratches in the dirt?
No, that sounds much too nice.
Oh, far too nice.
Seams, rather, of a Greyback Shirt,
And we're the little lice
Wriggling about in them a week or two,
Till one day, suddenly, from the blue
Something bloody and big will come
Like---watch this fingernail and thumb!---
Squash! and he needs no twice.



 The Two Brothers
(An Allegory)


Once two brothers, Joe and Will,
Parted each to choose his home,
Joe on top of Windy Hill
Where the storm clouds go and come
All day long, but Will the other
In the plain would snugly rest
Low and safe yet near his brother:
Low and safe he made his nest
At the foot of Windy Hill,
Built a clattering Watermill.
In the winter Joe would freeze,
Will lay warm in his snug mill;
Through the summer Joe's cool breeze
Filled with envy burning Will.
Yet to take all times together
Both were portioned their fair due,
Joe enjoyed the fine warm weather,
Will could smile in winter too;
Neither troubled nor complained,
Each in his own home remained.
These two brothers at first sight
Made a pair of Heavenly Twins,
Two green peas, two birds in flight,
Two fresh daisies, two new pins:
Yet the second time you'd seen 'em,
Seen 'em close and watched 'em well,
You would find there lay between 'em
All the span of Heaven and Hell,
Spring and Autumn, East and West,
And I know whom I liked best.
Listen: once when lofty Joe
Climbing down to view the mill,
Wept to find Will lived so low
Would not stop to dine with Will,
Will climbed back through the cloudy smother
Laughed to feel he stood so high,
Tossed his hat up, kissed his brother,
Drank old ale, ate crusty pie . . .
will had no high soul, but oh
Give us Will, we all hate Joe!



 The Voice Of Beauty Drowned

 
Cry from the thicket my heart's bird!
The other birds woke all around,
Rising with toot and howl they stirred
Their plumage, broke the trembling sound,
They craned their necks, they fluttered wings,
'While we are silent no one sings,
And while we sing you hush your throat,
Or tune your melody to our note.'
Cry from the thicket my heart's bird!
The screams and hootings rose again:
They gaped with raucous beaks, they whirred
Their noisy plumage; small but plain
The lonely hidden singer made
A well of grief within the glade.
'Whist, silly fool, be off,' they shout,
'Or we'll come pluck your feathers out.'
Cry from the thicket my heart's bird!
Slight and small the lovely cry
Came trickling down, but no one heard.
Parrot and cuckoo, crow, magpie
Jarred horrid notes, the jangling jay
Ripped the fine threads of song away,
For why should peeping chick aspire
To challenge their loud woodland choir?
Cried it so sweet that unseen bird?
Lovelier could no music be,
Clearer than water, soft as curd,
Fresh as the blossomed cherry tree.
How sang the others all around?
Piercing and harsh, a maddening sound,
With Pretty Poll, tuwit-tu-woo,
Peewit, caw caw, cuckoo-cuckoo.



 To An Ungentle Critic

The great sun sinks behind the town
Through a red mist of Volnay wine....
But what's the use of setting down
That glorious blaze behind the town?
You'll only skip the page, you'll look
For newer pictures in this book;
You've read of sunsets rich as mine.
A fresh wind fills the evening air
With horrid crying of night birds....
But what reads new or curious there
When cold winds fly across the air?
You'll only frown; you'll turn the page,
But find no glimpse of your 'New Age
Of Poetry' in my worn-out words.
Must winds that cut like blades of steel
And sunsets swimming in Volnay,
The holiest, cruellest pains I feel,
Die stillborn, because old men squeal
For something new: 'Write something new:
We've read this poem---that one too,
And twelve more like 'em yesterday'?
No, no! my chicken, I shall scrawl
Just what I fancy as I strike it,
Fairies and Fusiliers, and all.
Old broken knock-kneed thought will crawl
Across my verse in the classic way.
And, sir, be careful what you say;
There are old-fashioned folk still like it.



 To Lucasta On Going To The Wars
---For The Fourth Time


It doesn't matter what's the cause,
What wrong they say we're righting,
A curse for treaties, bonds and laws,
When we're to do the fighting!
And since we lads are proud and true,
What else remains to do?
Lucasta, when to France your man
Returns his fourth time, hating war,
Yet laughs as calmly as he can
And flings an oath, but says no more,
That is not courage, that's not fear---
Lucasta he's a Fusilier,
And his pride sends him here.
Let statesmen bluster, bark and bray
And so decide who started
This bloody war, and who's to pay
But he must be stout-hearted,
Must sit and stake with quiet breath,
Playing at cards with Death.
Don't plume yourself he fights for you;
It is no courage, love, or hate
That lets us do the things we do;
It's pride that makes the heart so great;
It is not anger, no, nor fear---
Lucasta he's a Fusilier,
And his pride keeps him here.



 To R.N.
(From Frise on the Somme in February 1917, in answer to a letter, saying: 'I am just finishing my Faun poem: I wish you were here to feed him with cherries.')


Here by a snow-bound river
In scrapen holes we shiver,
And like old bitterns we
Boom to you plaintively.
Robert, how can I rhyme
Verses at your desire---
Sleek fauns and cherry-time,
Vague music and green trees,
Hot sun and gentle breeze,
England in June attire,
And life born young again,
For your gay goatish brute
Drunk with warm melody
Singing on beds of thyme
With red and rolling eye,
Waking with wanton lute
All the Devonian plain,
Lips dark with juicy stain,
Ears hung with bobbing fruit?
Why should I keep him time?
Why in this cold and rime
Where even to think is pain?
No, Robert, there's no reason;
Cherries are out of season,
Ice grips at branch and root,
And singing birds are mute.



 True Johnny

Johnny, sweetheart, can you be true
To all those famous vows you've made?
Will you love me as I love you
Until we both in earth are laid?
Or shall the old wives nod and say
'His love was only for a day:
The mood goes by,
His fancies fly,
And Mary's left to sigh'?
Mary, alas, you've hit the truth,
And I with grief can but admit
Hot-blooded haste controls my youth,
My idle fancies veer and flit
From flower to flower, from tree to tree,
And when the moment catches me,
Oh, love goes by
Away I fly
And leave my girl to sigh.
Could you but now foretell the day,
Johnny, when this sad thing must be,
When light and gay you'll turn away
And laugh and break the heart in me?
For like a nut for true love's sake
My empty heart shall crack and break,
When fancies fly
And love goes by
And Mary's left to die.
When the sun turns against the clock,
When Avon waters upward flow,
When eggs are laid by barn-door cock,
When dusty hens do strut and crow,
When up is down, when left is right,
Oh, then I'll break the troth I plight,
With careless eye
Away I'll fly
And Mary here shall die.



 Two Fusiliers

And have we done with War at last?
Well, we've been lucky devils both,
And there's no need of pledge or oath
To bind our lovely friendship fast,
By firmer stuff
Close bound enough.
By wire and wood and stake we're bound,
By Fricourt and by Festubert,
By whipping rain, by the sun's glare,
By all the misery and loud sound,
By a Spring day,
By Picard clay.
Show me the two so closely bound
As we, by the wet bond of blood,
By friendship blossoming from mud,
By Death: we faced him, and we found
Beauty in Death,
In dead men, breath.



 When I'M Killed

When I'm killed, don't think of me
Buried there in Cambrin Wood,
Nor as in Zion think of me
With the Intolerable Good.
And there's one thing that I know well,
I'm damned if I'll be damned to Hell!
So when I'm killed, don't wait for me,
Walking the dim corridor;
In Heaven or Hell, don't wait for me,
Or you must wait for evermore.
You'll find me buried, living-dead
In these verses that you've read.
So when I'm killed, don't mourn for me,
Shot, poor lad, so bold and young,
Killed and gone---don't mourn for me.
On your lips my life is hung:
O friends and lovers, you can save
Your playfellow from the grave.



 Willaree

On the rough mountain wind
That blows so free
Rides a little storm-sprite
Whose name is Willaree.
The fleecy cloudlets are not his,
No shepherd is he,
For he drives the shaggy thunderclouds
Over land and sea.
His home is on the mountain-top
Where I love to be,
Amid grey rocks and brambles
And the red rowan-tree.
He whistles down the chimney,
He whistles to me,
And I send greeting back to him
Whistling cheerily.
The great elms are battling,
Waves are on the sea,
Loud roars the mountain-wind---
God rest you, Willaree!



 Youth And Folly
('Life is a very awful thing! You young fellows are too busy being jolly to realize the folly of your lives.'
---A Charterhouse Sermon)


In Chapel often when I bawl
The hymns, to show I'm musical,
With bright eye and cheery voice
Bidding Christian folk rejoice,
Shame be it said, I've not a thought
Of the One Being whom I ought
To worship: with unwitting roar
Other godheads I adore.
I celebrate the Gods of Mirth
And Love and Youth and Springing Earth,
Bacchus, beautiful, divine,
Gulping down his heady wine,
Dear Pan piping in his hollow,
Fiery-headed King Apollo
And rugged Atlas all aloof
Holding up the purple roof.
I have often felt and sung,
'It's a good thing to be young:
Though the preacher says it's folly,
Is it foolish to be jolly?'
I have often prayed in fear,
'Let me never grow austere;
Let me never think, I pray,
Too much about Judgment Day;
Never, never feel in Spring,
Life's a very awful thing!'
Then I realize and start
And curse my arrogant young heart,
Bind it over to confess
Its horrible ungodliness,
Set myself penances, and sigh
That I was born in sin, and try
To find the whole world vanity.