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diff --git a/old/10122-8.txt b/old/10122-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..73e316e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10122-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2194 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Fairies and Fusiliers, by Robert Graves + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Fairies and Fusiliers + +Author: Robert Graves + +Release Date: November 18, 2003 [eBook #10122] + +Language: English + +Chatacter set encoding: iso-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAIRIES AND FUSILIERS*** + + +E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Sjaani, and Project Gutenberg Distributed +Proofreaders + + + +FAIRIES AND FUSILIERS + +BY + +ROBERT GRAVES + +1918 + + + + + + + + +TO + +THE ROYAL WELCH FUSILIERS + +_I have to thank Mr. Harold Monro, of The +Poetry Book Shop, for permission to include +in this volume certain poems of which he +possesses the copyright; also the editor of the +"Nation" for a similar courtesy._ + +R.G. + + + + +CONTENTS + +TO AN UNGENTLE CRITIC +AN OLD TWENTY-THIRD MAN +TO LUCASTA ON GOING TO THE WAR--FOR THE FOURTH TIME +TWO FUSILIERS +TO ROBERT NICHOLS +DEAD COW FARM +GOLIATH AND DAVID +BABYLON +MR. PHILOSOPHER +THE CRUEL MOON +FINLAND +A PINCH OF SALT +THE CATERPILLAR +SORLEY'S WEATHER +THE COTTAGE +THE LAST POST +WHEN I'M KILLED +LETTER TO S.S. FROM MAMETZ WOOD +A DEAD BOCHE +FAUN +THE SPOILSPORT +THE SHIVERING BEGGAR +JONAH +JOHN SKELTON +I WONDER WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE DROWNED? +DOUBLE RED DAISIES +CAREERS +I'D LOVE TO BE A FAIRY'S CHILD +THE NEXT WAR +STRONG BEER +MARIGOLDS +THE LADY VISITOR IN THE PAUPER WARD +LOVE AND BLACK MAGIC +SMOKE-RINGS +A CHILD'S NIGHTMARE +ESCAPE +THE BOUGH OF NONSENSE +NOT DEAD +A BOY IN CHURCH +CORPORAL STARE +THE ASSAULT HEROIC +THE POET IN THE NURSERY +IN THE WILDERNESS +CHERRY-TIME +1915 +FREE VERSE + + + + + +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. + + + + +AN OLD TWENTY-THIRD MAN + +"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 struggle + by, +The sullen pack of ragged ugly swine. +Is that the Legion, Gracchus? Quick, the + wine!" +"Strabo," said Gracchus, "you are strange tonight. +The Legion is the Legion; it's all right. +If these new men are slovenly, in your thinking, +God damn 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." + + + + +TO LUCASTA ON GOING TO THE WAR-- +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, +But let us do the things we do; + It's pride that makes the heart be great; +It is not anger, no, nor fear-- +Lucasta he's a Fusilier, + And his pride keeps him here. + + + + +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 red bond of blood, +By friendship, blossoming from mud, +By Death: we faced him, and we found +Beauty in Death, +In dead men breath. + + + + +TO ROBERT NICHOLS + +(From Frise on the Somme in February, 1917, in answer +to a letter saying: "I am just finishing my 'Faun's +Holiday.' I wish you were here to feed him with +cherries.") + + +Here by a snowbound river +In scrapen holes we shiver, +And like old bitterns we +Boom to you plaintively: +Robert how can I rhyme +Verses for 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, +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 dream is pain? +No, Robert, there's no reason: +Cherries are out of season, +Ice grips at branch and root, +And singing birds are mute. + + + + +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, +Primeval mud, cold stones and rain. +Here flesh decays and blood drips red, +And the Cow's dead, the old Cow's dead. + + + + +GOLIATH AND DAVID + +(FOR D.C.T., KILLED AT FRICOURT, MARCH, +1916) + + +Yet once an earlier David took +Smooth pebbles from the brook: +Out between the lines he went +To that one-sided tournament, +A shepherd boy who stood out fine +And young to fight a Philistine +Clad all in brazen mail. He swears +That he's killed lions, he's killed bears, +And those that scorn the God of Zion +Shall perish so like bear or lion. +But ... the historian of that fight +Had not the heart to tell it right. + +Striding within javelin range, +Goliath marvels at this strange +Goodly-faced boy so proud of strength. +David's clear eye measures the length; +With hand thrust back, he cramps one knee, +Poises a moment thoughtfully, +And hurls with a long vengeful swing. +The pebble, humming from the sling +Like a wild bee, flies a sure line +For the forehead of the Philistine; +Then ... but there comes a brazen clink, +And quicker than a man can think +Goliath's shield parries each cast. +Clang! clang! and clang! was David's last. +Scorn blazes in the Giant's eye, +Towering unhurt six cubits high. +Says foolish David, "Damn your shield! +And damn my sling! but I'll not yield." +He takes his staff of Mamre oak, +A knotted shepherd-staff that's broke +The skull of many a wolf and fox +Come filching lambs from Jesse's flocks. +Loud laughs Goliath, and that laugh +Can scatter chariots like blown chaff +To rout; but David, calm and brave, +Holds his ground, for God will save. +Steel crosses wood, a flash, and oh! +Shame for beauty's overthrow! +(God's eyes are dim, His ears are shut.) +One cruel backhand sabre-cut +"I'm hit! I'm killed!" young David cries, +Throws blindly forward, chokes ... and dies. +And look, spike-helmeted, grey, grim, +Goliath straddles over him. + + + + +BABYLON + +The child alone a poet is: +Spring and Fairyland are his. +Truth and Reason show but dim, +And all's poetry with him. +Rhyme and music flow in plenty +For the lad of one-and-twenty, +But Spring for him is no more now +Than daisies to a munching cow; +Just a cheery pleasant season, +Daisy buds to live at ease on. +He's forgotten how he smiled +And shrieked at snowdrops when a child, +Or wept one evening secretly +For April's glorious misery. +Wisdom made him old and wary +Banishing the Lords of Faery. +Wisdom made a breach and battered +Babylon to bits: she scattered +To the hedges and ditches +All our nursery gnomes and witches. +Lob and Puck, poor frantic elves, +Drag their treasures from the shelves. +Jack the Giant-killer's gone, +Mother Goose and Oberon, +Bluebeard and King Solomon. +Robin, and Red Riding Hood +Take together to the wood, +And Sir Galahad lies hid +In a cave with Captain Kidd. +None of all the magic hosts, +None remain but a few ghosts +Of timorous heart, to linger on +Weeping for lost Babylon. + + + + +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. + + + + +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. + + + + +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. + + + + +A PINCH OF SALT + +When a dream is born in you + With a sudden clamorous pain, +When you know the dream is true + And lovely, with no flaw nor stain, +O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch +You'll hurt the delicate thing you prize so much. + +Dreams are like a bird that mocks, + Flirting the feathers of his tail. +When you seize at the salt-box + Over the hedge you'll see him sail. +Old birds are neither caught with salt nor chaff: +They watch you from the apple bough and laugh. + +Poet, never chase the dream. + Laugh yourself and turn away. +Mask your hunger, let it seem +Small matter if he come or stay; +But when he nestles in your hand at last, +Close up your fingers tight and hold him fast. + + + + +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 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. + + + + +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. + + + + +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 LAST POST + +The bugler sent a call of high romance-- +"Lights out! Lights out!" to the deserted square. +On the thin brazen notes he threw a prayer, +"God, if it's _this_ for me next time in France ... +O spare the phantom bugle as I lie +Dead in the gas and smoke and roar of guns, +Dead in a row with the other broken ones +Lying so stiff and still under the sky, +Jolly young Fusiliers too good to die." + + + + +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. + + + + +LETTER TO S.S. FROM MAMETZ WOOD + +I never dreamed we'd meet that day +In our old haunts down Fricourt way, +Plotting such marvellous journeys there +For jolly old "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 +Snowden and Hebog capped with white, +And lots of other jolly 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 Ben and Claire 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 thumbprint close behind. +You'll see where Math, Mathonwy's son, +Spoke with the wizard Gwydion +And bad him from 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 awhile, +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 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 jolly peasants clad in furs +Will greet the Welch-ski officers +With open arms, and ere we pass +Will make us vocal with Kavasse. +In old Bagdad we'll call a halt +At the Sâshuns' 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! + + + + +A DEAD BOCHE + +To you who'd read my songs of War + And only hear of blood and fame, +I'll say (you've heard it said before) + "War's Hell!" and if you doubt the same, +Today I found in Mametz Wood +A certain cure for lust of blood: + +Where, propped against a shattered trunk, + In a great mess of things unclean, +Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk + With clothes and face a sodden green, +Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired, +Dribbling black blood from nose and beard. + + + + +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!" + +Today 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?" + + + + +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 tomorrow's book he'll score + Indiscretions of today. + +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. + +Critics 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 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." + + + + +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. + + + + +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, +_Hie '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! + + + + +I WONDER WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE DROWNED? + +Look at my knees, +That island rising from the steamy seas! +The candles 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?_ + + + + +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._ + + + + +CAREERS + +Father is quite the greatest poet + That ever lived anywhere. +You say you're going to write great music-- + I chose that first: it's unfair. +Besides, now I can't be the greatest painter and + do Christ and angels, or lovely pears + and apples and grapes on a green dish, + or storms at sea, or anything lovely, +Because that's been taken by Claire. + +It's stupid to be an engine-driver, + And soldiers are horrible men. +I won't be a tailor, I won't be a sailor, + And gardener's taken by Ben. +It's unfair if you say that you'll write great + music, you horrid, you unkind (I simply + loathe you, though you are my + sister), you beast, cad, coward, cheat, + bully, liar! +Well? Say what's left for me then! +But _we_ won't go to your ugly music. + (Listen!) Ben will garden and dig, +And Claire will finish her wondrous pictures + All flaming and splendid and big. + +And I'll be a perfectly marvellous carpenter, + and I'll make cupboards and benches + and tables and ... and baths, and + nice wooden boxes for studs and + money, +And you'll be jealous, you pig! + + + + +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. + + + + +THE NEXT WAR + +You young friskies who today +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. + + + + +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 every one +Every one, any one, +There's a prize for every one, +Whoever he may be: +Crags for the mountaineer, +Flags for the Fusilier, +For English poets, 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, +English drink and English 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." + + + + +MARIGOLDS + +With a fork drive Nature out, + She will ever yet return; +Hedge the flowerbed 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 +String again from hidden roots +Pull or stab or cut or burn, +Love must ever yet return. + + + + +THE LADY VISITOR IN THE PAUPER WARD + +Why do you break upon this old, cool peace, +This painted peace of ours, +With harsh dress hissing like a flock of geese, +With garish flowers? +Why do you churn smooth waters rough again, +Selfish old skin-and-bone? +Leave us to quiet dreaming and slow pain, +Leave us alone. + + + + +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." + + + + +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. + + + + +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 head, +Lapped my blood, while on and on +The old voice cruel and flat +Says 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!" + + + + +ESCAPE + +(_August_ 6, 1916.--Officer previously reported died of +wounds, now reported wounded: Graves, Captain R., +Royal Welch Fusiliers.) + + + ... But I _was_ dead, an hour or more. +I woke when I'd already passed the door +That Cerberus guards, and half-way down the road +To Lethe, as an old Greek signpost showed. +Above me, on my stretcher swinging by, +I saw new stars in the subterrene sky: +A Cross, a Rose in bloom, a Cage with bars, +And a barbed Arrow feathered in fine stars. +I felt the vapours of forgetfulness +Float in my nostrils. Oh, may Heaven bless +Dear Lady Proserpine, who saw me wake, +And, stooping over me, for Henna's sake +Cleared my poor buzzing head and sent me back +Breathless, with leaping heart along the track. +After me roared and clattered angry hosts +Of demons, heroes, and policeman-ghosts. +"Life! life! I can't be dead! I won't be dead! +Damned if I'll die for any one!" I said.... +Cerberus stands and grins above me now, +Wearing three heads--lion, and lynx, and sow. +"Quick, a revolver! But my Webley's gone, +Stolen!... No bombs ... no knife.... + The crowd swarms on, +Bellows, hurls stones.... Not even a honeyed sop ... +Nothing.... Good Cerberus!... Good dog!... but stop! +Stay!... A great luminous thought ... I do believe +There's still some morphia that I bought on leave." +Then swiftly Cerberus' wide mouths I cram +With army biscuit smeared with ration jam; + +And sleep lurks in the luscious plum and apple. +He crunches, swallows, stiffens, seems to grapple +With the all-powerful poppy ... then a snore, +A crash; the beast blocks up the corridor +With monstrous hairy carcase, red and dun-- +Too late! for I've sped through. + O Life! O Sun! + + + + +THE BOUGH OF NONSENSE + +An Idyll + +Back from the Somme two Fusiliers +Limped painfully home; the elder said, +_S_. "Robert, I've lived three thousand years +This Summer, and I'm nine parts dead." +_R_. "But if that's truly so," I cried, "quick, now, +Through these great oaks and see the famous bough + +"Where once a nonsense built her nest +With skulls and flowers and all things queer, +In an old boot, with patient breast +Hatching three eggs; and the next year ..." +_S_. "Foaled thirteen squamous young beneath, and rid +Wales of drink, melancholy, and psalms, she did." + +Said he, "Before this quaint mood fails, +We'll sit and weave a nonsense hymn," +_R_. "Hanging it up with monkey tails + In a deep grove all hushed and dim...." +_S_. "To glorious yellow-bunched banana-trees," +_R_. "Planted in dreams by pious Portuguese," + +_S_. "Which men are wise beyond their time, + And worship nonsense, no one more." +_R_. "Hard by, among old quince and lime, + They've built a temple with no floor," +_S_. "And whosoever worships in that place, + He disappears from sight and leaves no trace." + +_R_. "Once the Galatians built a fane + To Sense: what duller God than that?" +_S_. "But the first day of autumn rain + The roof fell in and crushed them flat." +_R_. "Ay, for a roof of subtlest logic falls + When nonsense is foundation for the walls." + + +I tell him old Galatian tales; +He caps them in quick Portuguese, +While phantom creatures with green scales +Scramble and roll among the trees. +The hymn swells; on a bough above us sings +A row of bright pink birds, flapping their wings. + + + + +NOT DEAD + +Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain, +I know that David's with me here again. +All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. +Caressingly I stroke +Rough hark of the friendly oak. +A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his. +Turf burns with pleasant smoke; +I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses. +All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. +Over the whole wood in a little while +Breaks his slow smile. + + + + +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. + + + + +CORPORAL STARE + +Back from the line one night in June, +I gave a dinner at Bethune-- +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, +With drinking songs, a jolly 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 May at Festubert. +Caught on patrol near the Boche wire, +Tom 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. + + + + +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: +"Today we've killed your pride; +Today 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 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 beastly 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 pretty emerald green was coated + With jam and greasy marks from my hot hand, +While round the nursery for long months there floated + Wonderful words no one could understand. + + + + +IN THE WILDERNESS + +Christ 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 bitterns call +From ruined palace-wall, +Answered them brotherly. +He held communion +With the she-pelican +Of lonely piety. +Basilisk, cockatrice, +Flocked to his homilies, +With mail of dread device, +With monstrous barbéd slings, +With eager dragon-eyes; +Great rats on leather wings +And poor blind broken things, +Foul in their miseries. +And ever with Him went, +Of all His wanderings +Comrade, with ragged coat, +Gaunt ribs--poor innocent-- +Bleeding foot, burning throat, +The guileless old scapegoat; +For forty nights and days +Followed in Jesus' ways, +Sure guard behind Him kept, +Tears like a lover wept. + + + + +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. + + + + +1915 + +I've watched the Seasons passing slow, so slow, +In the fields between La Bassée and Bethune; +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. + + + + +FREE VERSE + +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 pretty +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! + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAIRIES AND FUSILIERS*** + + +******* This file should be named 10122-8.txt or 10122-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/1/2/10122 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a> + +Title: Fairies and Fusiliers + +Author: Robert Graves + +Release Date: November 18, 2003 [eBook #10122] + +Language: English + +Chatacter set encoding: iso-8859-1 + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAIRIES AND FUSILIERS*** + + +</pre> +<center><b>E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Sjaani, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders</b></center> +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> +<br /> +<table width="80%" align="center"> + <tr><td> +<h1 align="center">FAIRIES AND FUSILIERS</h1> +<h3 align="center">BY</h3> +<h2 align="center">ROBERT GRAVES</h2> +<h3 align="center">1918</h3> +TO<br /> +THE ROYAL WELCH FUSILIERS +<p><i>I have to thank Mr. Harold Monro, of The<br /> +Poetry Book Shop, for permission to include<br /> +in this volume certain poems of which he<br /> +possesses the copyright; also the editor of the<br /> +"Nation" for a similar courtesy.</i></p> + +<p><i>R.G.</i></p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<table border="0" cellspacing="10"> + <tr> + <td><p><a href="#critic">TO AN UNGENTLE CRITIC</a><br /> +<a href="#oldman">AN OLD TWENTY-THIRD MAN</a><br /> +<a href="#lucasta">TO LUCASTA ON GOING TO THE WAR—FOR THE FOURTH TIME</a><br /> +<a href="#twofusiliers">TWO FUSILIERS</a><br /> +<a href="#robertnic">TO ROBERT NICHOLS</a><br /> +<a href="#deadcow">DEAD COW FARM</a><br /> +<a href="#goliath">GOLIATH AND DAVID</a><br /> +<a href="#babylon">BABYLON</a><br /> +<a href="#philosopher">MR. PHILOSOPHER</a><br /> +<a href="#cruelmoon">THE CRUEL MOON</a><br /> +<a href="#finland">FINLAND</a><br /> +<a href="#pinchsalt">A PINCH OF SALT</a><br /> +<a href="#caterpillar">THE CATERPILLAR</a><br /> +<a href="#sorley">SORLEY'S WEATHER</a><br /> +<a href="#cottage">THE COTTAGE</a><br /> +<a href="#lastpost">THE LAST POST</a><br /> +<a href="#killed">WHEN I'M KILLED</a><br /> +<a href="#mametzwood">LETTER TO S.S. FROM MAMETZ WOOD</a><br /> +<a href="#deadboche">A DEAD BOCHE</a><br /> +<a href="#faun">FAUN</a><br /> +<a href="#spoilsport">THE SPOILSPORT</a><br /> +<a href="#shiver">THE SHIVERING BEGGAR</a><br /> +<a href="#jonah">JONAH</a><br /> +</p></td> + <td><p><a href="#skelton">JOHN SKELTON</a><br /> +<a href="#drowned">I WONDER WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE DROWNED?</a><br /> +<a href="#redaisy">DOUBLE RED DAISIES</a><br /> +<a href="#careers">CAREERS</a><br /> +<a href="#fairychild">I'D LOVE TO BE A FAIRY'S CHILD</a><br /> +<a href="#nextwar">THE NEXT WAR</a><br /> +<a href="#strongbeer">STRONG BEER</a><br /> +<a href="#marigolds">MARIGOLDS</a><br /> +<a href="#pauper">THE LADY VISITOR IN THE PAUPER WARD</a><br /> +<a href="#magic">LOVE AND BLACK MAGIC</a><br /> +<a href="#smokering">SMOKE-RINGS</a><br /> +<a href="#nightmare">A CHILD'S NIGHTMARE</a><br /> +<a href="#escape">ESCAPE</a><br /> +<a href="#nonsense">THE BOUGH OF NONSENSE</a><br /> +<a href="#notdead">NOT DEAD</a><br /> +<a href="#church">A BOY IN CHURCH</a><br /> +<a href="#corporal">CORPORAL STARE</a><br /> +<a href="#heroic">THE ASSAULT HEROIC</a><br /> +<a href="#poetnursery">THE POET IN THE NURSERY</a><br /> +<a href="#wilderness">IN THE WILDERNESS</a><br /> +<a href="#cherrytime">CHERRY-TIME</a><br /> +<a href="#1915">1915</a><br /> +<a href="#freeverse">FREE VERSE</a><br /> +</p> +</td> + </tr> +</table> + +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="critic"></a><h2>TO AN UNGENTLE CRITIC</h2> +<p><i>The great sun sinks behind the town<br /> +Through a red mist of Volnay wine....</i><br /> +But what's the use of setting down<br /> +That glorious blaze behind the town?<br /> +You'll only skip the page, you'll look<br /> +For newer pictures in this book;<br /> +You've read of sunsets rich as mine.</p> +<p><i>A fresh wind fills the evening air<br /> +With horrid crying of night birds....</i><br /> +But what reads new or curious there<br /> +When cold winds fly across the air?<br /> +You'll only frown; you'll turn the page,<br /> +But find no glimpse of your "New Age<br /> +Of Poetry" in my worn-out words.</p> +<p>Must winds that cut like blades of steel<br /> +And sunsets swimming in Volnay,<br /> +The holiest, cruellest pains I feel,<br /> +Die stillborn, because old men squeal<br /> +For something new: "Write something new:<br /> +We've read this poem—that one too,<br /> +And twelve more like 'em yesterday"?</p> +<p>No, no! my chicken, I shall scrawl<br /> +Just what I fancy as I strike it,<br /> +Fairies and Fusiliers, and all<br /> +Old broken knock-kneed thought will crawl<br /> +Across my verse in the classic way.<br /> +And, sir, be careful what you say;<br /> +There are old-fashioned folk still like it.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="oldman"></a><h2>AN OLD TWENTY-THIRD MAN</h2> +<p>"Is that the Three-and-Twentieth, Strabo mine,<br /> +Marching below, and we still gulping wine?"<br /> +From the sad magic of his fragrant cup<br /> +The red-faced old centurion started up,<br /> +Cursed, battered on the table. "No," he said,<br /> +"Not that! The Three-and-Twentieth Legion's<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">dead,</span><br /> +Dead in the first year of this damned campaign—<br /> +The Legion's dead, dead, and won't rise again.<br /> +Pity? Rome pities her brave lads that die,<br /> +But we need pity also, you and I,<br /> +Whom Gallic spear and Belgian arrow miss,<br /> +Who live to see the Legion come to this,<br /> +Unsoldierlike, slovenly, bent on loot,<br /> +Grumblers, diseased, unskilled to thrust or shoot.<br /> +O, brown cheek, muscled shoulder, sturdy<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">thigh!</span><br /> +Where are they now? God! watch it struggle<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">by,</span><br /> +The sullen pack of ragged ugly swine.<br /> +Is that the Legion, Gracchus? Quick, the<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">wine!"</span><br /> +"Strabo," said Gracchus, "you are strange tonight.<br /> +The Legion is the Legion; it's all right.<br /> +If these new men are slovenly, in your thinking,<br /> +God damn it! you'll not better them by drinking.<br /> +They all try, Strabo; trust their hearts and hands.<br /> +The Legion is the Legion while Rome stands,<br /> +And these same men before the autumn's fall<br /> +Shall bang old Vercingetorix out of Gaul."</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="lucasta"></a><h2>TO LUCASTA ON GOING TO THE WAR—FOR THE FOURTH TIME</h2> +<p>It doesn't matter what's the cause,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">What wrong they say we're righting,</span><br /> +A curse for treaties, bonds and laws,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">When we're to do the fighting!</span><br /> +And since we lads are proud and true,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">What else remains to do?</span><br /> +Lucasta, when to France your man<br /> +Returns his fourth time, hating war,<br /> +Yet laughs as calmly as he can<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.25em;">And flings an oath, but says no more,</span><br /> +That is not courage, that's not fear—<br /> +Lucasta he's a Fusilier,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">And his pride sends him here.</span> +</p> +<p>Let statesmen bluster, bark and bray,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">And so decide who started</span><br /> +This bloody war, and who's to pay,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">But he must be stout-hearted,</span><br /> +Must sit and stake with quiet breath,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Playing at cards with Death.</span><br /> +Don't plume yourself he fights for you;<br /> +It is no courage, love, or hate,<br /> +But let us do the things we do;<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">It's pride that makes the heart be great;</span><br /> +It is not anger, no, nor fear—<br /> +Lucasta he's a Fusilier,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">And his pride keeps him here.</span> +</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="twofusiliers"></a><h2>TWO FUSILIERS</h2> +<p>And have we done with War at last?<br /> +Well, we've been lucky devils both,<br /> +And there's no need of pledge or oath<br /> +To bind our lovely friendship fast,<br /> +By firmer stuff<br /> +Close bound enough.</p> +<p>By wire and wood and stake we're bound,<br /> +By Fricourt and by Festubert,<br /> +By whipping rain, by the sun's glare,<br /> +By all the misery and loud sound,<br /> +By a Spring day,<br /> +By Picard clay.</p> +<p>Show me the two so closely bound<br /> +As we, by the red bond of blood,<br /> +By friendship, blossoming from mud,<br /> +By Death: we faced him, and we found<br /> +Beauty in Death,<br /> +In dead men breath.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="robertnic"></a><h2>TO ROBERT NICHOLS</h2> +<p>(From Frise on the Somme in February, 1917, in answer<br /> +to a letter saying: "I am just finishing my 'Faun's<br /> +Holiday.' I wish you were here to feed him with<br /> +cherries.")</p> +<p>Here by a snowbound river<br /> +In scrapen holes we shiver,<br /> +And like old bitterns we<br /> +Boom to you plaintively:<br /> +Robert how can I rhyme<br /> +Verses for your desire—<br /> +Sleek fauns and cherry-time,<br /> +Vague music and green trees,<br /> +Hot sun and gentle breeze,<br /> +England in June attire,<br /> +And life born young again,<br /> +For your gay goatish brute<br /> +Drunk with warm melody<br /> +Singing on beds of thyme<br /> +With red and rolling eye,<br /> +All the Devonian plain,<br /> +Lips dark with juicy stain,<br /> +Ears hung with bobbing fruit?<br /> +Why should I keep him time?<br /> +Why in this cold and rime,<br /> +Where even to dream is pain?<br /> +No, Robert, there's no reason:<br /> +Cherries are out of season,<br /> +Ice grips at branch and root,<br /> +And singing birds are mute.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="deadcow"></a><h2>DEAD COW FARM</h2> +<p>An ancient saga tells us how<br /> +In the beginning the First Cow<br /> +(For nothing living yet had birth<br /> +But Elemental Cow on earth)<br /> +Began to lick cold stones and mud:<br /> +Under her warm tongue flesh and blood<br /> +Blossomed, a miracle to believe:<br /> +And so was Adam born, and Eve.<br /> +Here now is chaos once again,<br /> +Primeval mud, cold stones and rain.<br /> +Here flesh decays and blood drips red,<br /> +And the Cow's dead, the old Cow's dead.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="goliath"></a><h2>GOLIATH AND DAVID</h2> +<p>(FOR D.C.T., KILLED AT FRICOURT, MARCH,<br /> +1916)</p> +<p>Yet once an earlier David took<br /> +Smooth pebbles from the brook:<br /> +Out between the lines he went<br /> +To that one-sided tournament,<br /> +A shepherd boy who stood out fine<br /> +And young to fight a Philistine<br /> +Clad all in brazen mail. He swears<br /> +That he's killed lions, he's killed bears,<br /> +And those that scorn the God of Zion<br /> +Shall perish so like bear or lion.<br /> +But ... the historian of that fight<br /> +Had not the heart to tell it right.</p> +<p>Striding within javelin range,<br /> +Goliath marvels at this strange<br /> +Goodly-faced boy so proud of strength.<br /> +David's clear eye measures the length;<br /> +With hand thrust back, he cramps one knee,<br /> +Poises a moment thoughtfully,<br /> +And hurls with a long vengeful swing.<br /> +The pebble, humming from the sling<br /> +Like a wild bee, flies a sure line<br /> +For the forehead of the Philistine;<br /> +Then ... but there comes a brazen clink,<br /> +And quicker than a man can think<br /> +Goliath's shield parries each cast.<br /> +Clang! clang! and clang! was David's last.<br /> +Scorn blazes in the Giant's eye,<br /> +Towering unhurt six cubits high.<br /> +Says foolish David, "Damn your shield!<br /> +And damn my sling! but I'll not yield."<br /> +He takes his staff of Mamre oak,<br /> +A knotted shepherd-staff that's broke<br /> +The skull of many a wolf and fox<br /> +Come filching lambs from Jesse's flocks.<br /> +Loud laughs Goliath, and that laugh<br /> +Can scatter chariots like blown chaff<br /> +To rout; but David, calm and brave,<br /> +Holds his ground, for God will save.<br /> +Steel crosses wood, a flash, and oh!<br /> +Shame for beauty's overthrow!<br /> +(God's eyes are dim, His ears are shut.)<br /> +One cruel backhand sabre-cut<br /> +"I'm hit! I'm killed!" young David cries,<br /> +Throws blindly forward, chokes ... and dies.<br /> +And look, spike-helmeted, grey, grim,<br /> +Goliath straddles over him.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="babylon"></a><h2>BABYLON</h2> +<p>The child alone a poet is:<br /> +Spring and Fairyland are his.<br /> +Truth and Reason show but dim,<br /> +And all's poetry with him.<br /> +Rhyme and music flow in plenty<br /> +For the lad of one-and-twenty,<br /> +But Spring for him is no more now<br /> +Than daisies to a munching cow;<br /> +Just a cheery pleasant season,<br /> +Daisy buds to live at ease on.<br /> +He's forgotten how he smiled<br /> +And shrieked at snowdrops when a child,<br /> +Or wept one evening secretly<br /> +For April's glorious misery.<br /> +Wisdom made him old and wary<br /> +Banishing the Lords of Faery.<br /> +Wisdom made a breach and battered<br /> +Babylon to bits: she scattered<br /> +To the hedges and ditches<br /> +All our nursery gnomes and witches.<br /> +Lob and Puck, poor frantic elves,<br /> +Drag their treasures from the shelves.<br /> +Jack the Giant-killer's gone,<br /> +Mother Goose and Oberon,<br /> +Bluebeard and King Solomon.<br /> +Robin, and Red Riding Hood<br /> +Take together to the wood,<br /> +And Sir Galahad lies hid<br /> +In a cave with Captain Kidd.<br /> +None of all the magic hosts,<br /> +None remain but a few ghosts<br /> +Of timorous heart, to linger on<br /> +Weeping for lost Babylon.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="philosopher"></a><h2>MR. PHILOSOPHER</h2> +<p>Old Mr. Philosopher<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Comes for Ben and Claire,</span><br /> +An ugly man, a tall man,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">With bright-red hair.</span> +</p> +<p>The books that he's written<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">No one can read.</span><br /> +"In fifty years they'll understand:<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Now there's no need.</span> +</p> +<p>"All that matters now<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Is getting the fun.</span><br /> +Come along, Ben and Claire;<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Plenty to be done."</span> +</p> +<p>Then old Philosopher,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Wisest man alive,</span><br /> +Plays at Lions and Tigers<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Down along the drive—</span> +</p> +<p>Gambolling fiercely<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Through bushes and grass,</span><br /> +Making monstrous mouths,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Braying like an ass,</span> +</p> +<p>Twisting buttercups<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">In his orange hair,</span><br /> +Hopping like a kangaroo,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Growling like a bear.</span> +</p> +<p>Right up to tea-time<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">They frolic there.</span><br /> +"My legs <i>are</i> wingle,"<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Says Ben to Claire.</span> +</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="cruelmoon"></a><h2>THE CRUEL MOON</h2> +<p>The cruel Moon hangs out of reach<br /> +Up above the shadowy beech.<br /> +Her face is stupid, but her eye<br /> +Is small and sharp and very sly.<br /> +Nurse says the Moon can drive you mad?<br /> +No, that's a silly story, lad!<br /> +Though she be angry, though she would<br /> +Destroy all England if she could,<br /> +Yet think, what damage can she do<br /> +Hanging there so far from you?<br /> +Don't heed what frightened nurses say:<br /> +Moons hang much too far away.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="finland"></a><h2>FINLAND</h2> +<p>Feet and faces tingle<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">In that frore land:</span><br /> +Legs wobble and go wingle,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">You scarce can stand.</span></p> +<p>The skies are jewelled all around,<br /> +The ploughshare snaps in the iron ground,<br /> +The Finn with face like paper<br /> +And eyes like a lighted taper<br /> +Hurls his rough rune<br /> +At the wintry moon<br /> +And stamps to mark the tune.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="pinchsalt"></a><h2>A PINCH OF SALT</h2> +<p>When a dream is born in you<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">With a sudden clamorous pain,</span><br /> +When you know the dream is true<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">And lovely, with no flaw nor stain,</span><br /> +O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch<br /> +You'll hurt the delicate thing you prize so much.</p> +<p>Dreams are like a bird that mocks,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Flirting the feathers of his tail.</span><br /> +When you seize at the salt-box<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Over the hedge you'll see him sail.</span><br /> +Old birds are neither caught with salt nor chaff:<br /> +They watch you from the apple bough and laugh.</p> +<p>Poet, never chase the dream.<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Laugh yourself and turn away.</span><br /> +Mask your hunger, let it seem<br /> +Small matter if he come or stay;<br /> +But when he nestles in your hand at last,<br /> +Close up your fingers tight and hold him fast.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="caterpillar"></a><h2>THE CATERPILLAR</h2> +<p>Under this loop of honeysuckle,<br /> +A creeping, coloured caterpillar,<br /> +I gnaw the fresh green hawthorn spray,<br /> +I nibble it leaf by leaf away.</p> +<p>Down beneath grow dandelions,<br /> +Daisies, old-man's-looking-glasses;<br /> +Rooks flap croaking across the lane.<br /> +I eat and swallow and eat again.</p> +<p>Here come raindrops helter-skelter;<br /> +I munch and nibble unregarding:<br /> +Hawthorn leaves are juicy and firm.<br /> +I'll mind my business: I'm a good worm.</p> +<p>When I'm old, tired, melancholy,<br /> +I'll build a leaf-green mausoleum<br /> +Close by, here on this lovely spray,<br /> +And die and dream the ages away.</p> +<p>Some say worms win resurrection,<br /> +With white wings beating flitter-flutter,<br /> +But wings or a sound sleep, why should I care?<br /> +Either way I'll miss my share.</p> +<p>Under this loop of honeysuckle,<br /> +A hungry, hairy caterpillar,<br /> +I crawl on my high and swinging seat,<br /> +And eat, eat, eat—as one ought to eat.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="sorley"></a><h2>SORLEY'S WEATHER</h2> +<p>When outside the icy rain<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Comes leaping helter-skelter,</span><br /> +Shall I tie my restive brain<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Snugly under shelter?</span></p> +<p>Shall I make a gentle song<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Here in my firelit study,</span><br /> +When outside the winds blow strong<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">And the lanes are muddy?</span></p> +<p>With old wine and drowsy meats<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Am I to fill my belly?</span><br /> +Shall I glutton here with Keats?<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Shall I drink with Shelley?</span></p> +<p>Tobacco's pleasant, firelight's good:<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Poetry makes both better.</span><br /> +Clay is wet and so is mud,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Winter rains are wetter.</span></p> +<p>Yet rest there, Shelley, on the sill,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">For though the winds come frorely,</span><br /> +I'm away to the rain-blown hill<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">And the ghost of Sorley.</span> +</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="cottage"></a><h2>THE COTTAGE</h2> +<p>Here in turn succeed and rule<br /> +Carter, smith, and village fool,<br /> +Then again the place is known<br /> +As tavern, shop, and Sunday-school;<br /> +Now somehow it's come to me<br /> +To light the fire and hold the key,<br /> +Here in Heaven to reign alone.</p> +<p>All the walls are white with lime,<br /> +Big blue periwinkles climb<br /> +And kiss the crumbling window-sill;<br /> +Snug inside I sit and rhyme,<br /> +Planning, poem, book, or fable,<br /> +At my darling beech-wood table<br /> +Fresh with bluebells from the hill.</p> +<p>Through the window I can see<br /> +Rooks above the cherry-tree,<br /> +Sparrows in the violet bed,<br /> +Bramble-bush and bumble-bee,<br /> +And old red bracken smoulders still<br /> +Among boulders on the hill,<br /> +Far too bright to seem quite dead.</p> +<p>But old Death, who can't forget,<br /> +Waits his time and watches yet,<br /> +Waits and watches by the door.<br /> +Look, he's got a great new net,<br /> +And when my fighting starts afresh<br /> +Stouter cord and smaller mesh<br /> +Won't be cheated as before.</p> +<p>Nor can kindliness of Spring,<br /> +Flowers that smile nor birds that sing.<br /> +Bumble-bee nor butterfly,<br /> +Nor grassy hill nor anything<br /> +Of magic keep me safe to rhyme<br /> +In this Heaven beyond my time.<br /> +No! for Death is waiting by.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="lastpost"></a><h2>THE LAST POST</h2> +<p>The bugler sent a call of high romance—<br /> +"Lights out! Lights out!" to the deserted square.<br /> +On the thin brazen notes he threw a prayer,<br /> +"God, if it's <i>this</i> for me next time in France ...<br /> +O spare the phantom bugle as I lie<br /> +Dead in the gas and smoke and roar of guns,<br /> +Dead in a row with the other broken ones<br /> +Lying so stiff and still under the sky,<br /> +Jolly young Fusiliers too good to die."</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="killed"></a><h2>WHEN I'M KILLED</h2> +<p>When I'm killed, don't think of me<br /> +Buried there in Cambrin Wood,<br /> +Nor as in Zion think of me<br /> +With the Intolerable Good.<br /> +And there's one thing that I know well,<br /> +I'm damned if I'll be damned to Hell!</p> +<p>So when I'm killed, don't wait for me,<br /> +Walking the dim corridor;<br /> +In Heaven or Hell, don't wait for me,<br /> +Or you must wait for evermore.<br /> +You'll find me buried, living-dead<br /> +In these verses that you've read.</p> +<p>So when I'm killed, don't mourn for me,<br /> +Shot, poor lad, so bold and young,<br /> +Killed and gone—don't mourn for me.<br /> +On your lips my life is hung:<br /> +O friends and lovers, you can save<br /> +Your playfellow from the grave.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="mametzwood"></a><h2>LETTER TO S.S. FROM MAMETZ WOOD</h2> +<p>I never dreamed we'd meet that day<br /> +In our old haunts down Fricourt way,<br /> +Plotting such marvellous journeys there<br /> +For jolly old "Après-la-guerre."</p> +<p>Well, when it's over, first we'll meet<br /> +At Gweithdy Bach, my country seat<br /> +In Wales, a curious little shop<br /> +With two rooms and a roof on top,<br /> +A sort of Morlancourt-ish billet<br /> +That never needs a crowd to fill it.<br /> +But oh, the country round about!<br /> +The sort of view that makes you shout<br /> +For want of any better way<br /> +Of praising God: there's a blue bay<br /> +Shining in front, and on the right<br /> +Snowden and Hebog capped with white,<br /> +And lots of other jolly peaks<br /> +That you could wonder at for weeks,<br /> +With jag and spur and hump and cleft.<br /> +There's a grey castle on the left,<br /> +And back in the high Hinterland<br /> +You'll see the grave of Shawn Knarlbrand,<br /> +Who slew the savage Buffaloon<br /> +By the Nant-col one night in June,<br /> +And won his surname from the horn<br /> +Of this prodigious unicorn.<br /> +Beyond, where the two Rhinogs tower,<br /> +Rhinog Fach and Rhinog Fawr,<br /> +Close there after a four years' chase<br /> +From Thessaly and the woods of Thrace,<br /> +The beaten Dog-cat stood at bay<br /> +And growled and fought and passed away.<br /> +You'll see where mountain conies grapple<br /> +With prayer and creed in their rock chapel<br /> +Which Ben and Claire once built for them;<br /> +They call it Söar Bethlehem.<br /> +You'll see where in old Roman days,<br /> +Before Revivals changed our ways,<br /> +The Virgin 'scaped the Devil's grab,<br /> +Printing her foot on a stone slab<br /> +With five clear toe-marks; and you'll find<br /> +The fiendish thumbprint close behind.<br /> +You'll see where Math, Mathonwy's son,<br /> +Spoke with the wizard Gwydion<br /> +And bad him from South Wales set out<br /> +To steal that creature with the snout,<br /> +That new-discovered grunting beast<br /> +Divinely flavoured for the feast.<br /> +No traveller yet has hit upon<br /> +A wilder land than Meirion,<br /> +For desolate hills and tumbling stones,<br /> +Bogland and melody and old bones.<br /> +Fairies and ghosts are here galore,<br /> +And poetry most splendid, more<br /> +Than can be written with the pen<br /> +Or understood by common men.</p> +<p>In Gweithdy Bach we'll rest awhile,<br /> +We'll dress our wounds and learn to smile<br /> +With easier lips; we'll stretch our legs,<br /> +And live on bilberry tart and eggs,<br /> +And store up solar energy,<br /> +Basking in sunshine by the sea,<br /> +Until we feel a match once more<br /> +For <i>anything</i> but another war.</p> +<p>So then we'll kiss our families,<br /> +And sail across the seas<br /> +(The God of Song protecting us)<br /> +To the great hills of Caucasus.<br /> +Robert will learn the local <i>bat</i><br /> +For billeting and things like that,<br /> +If Siegfried learns the piccolo<br /> +To charm the people as we go.</p> +<p>The jolly peasants clad in furs<br /> +Will greet the Welch-ski officers<br /> +With open arms, and ere we pass<br /> +Will make us vocal with Kavasse.<br /> +In old Bagdad we'll call a halt<br /> +At the Sâshuns' ancestral vault;<br /> +We'll catch the Persian rose-flowers' scent,<br /> +And understand what Omar meant.<br /> +Bitlis and Mush will know our faces,<br /> +Tiflis and Tomsk, and all such places.<br /> +Perhaps eventually we'll get<br /> +Among the Tartars of Thibet.<br /> +Hobnobbing with the Chungs and Mings,<br /> +And doing wild, tremendous things<br /> +In free adventure, quest and fight,<br /> +And God! what poetry we'll write!</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="deadboche"></a><h2>A DEAD BOCHE</h2> +<p>To you who'd read my songs of War<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">And only hear of blood and fame,</span><br /> +I'll say (you've heard it said before)<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">"War's Hell!" and if you doubt the same,</span><br /> +Today I found in Mametz Wood<br /> +A certain cure for lust of blood:</p> +<p>Where, propped against a shattered trunk,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">In a great mess of things unclean,</span><br /> +Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">With clothes and face a sodden green,</span><br /> +Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired,<br /> +Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="faun"></a><h2>FAUN</h2> +<p>Here down this very way,<br /> +Here only yesterday<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">King Faun went leaping.</span><br /> +He sang, with careless shout<br /> +Hurling his name about;<br /> +He sang, with oaken stock<br /> +His steps from rock to rock<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">In safety keeping,</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">"Here Faun is free,</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">Here Faun is free!"</span></p> +<p>Today against yon pine,<br /> +Forlorn yet still divine,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">King Faun leant weeping.</span><br /> +"They drank my holy brook,<br /> +My strawberries they took,<br /> +My private path they trod."<br /> +Loud wept the desolate God,<br /> +Scorn on scorn heaping,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">"Faun, what is he,</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Faun, what is he?"</span> +</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="spoilsport"></a><h2>THE SPOILSPORT</h2> +<p>My familiar ghost again<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Comes to see what he can see,</span><br /> +Critic, son of Conscious Brain,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Spying on our privacy.</span></p> +<p>Slam the window, bolt the door,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Yet he'll enter in and stay;</span><br /> +In tomorrow's book he'll score<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Indiscretions of today.</span></p> +<p>Whispered love and muttered fears,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">How their echoes fly about!</span><br /> +None escape his watchful ears,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Every sigh might be a shout.</span></p> +<p>No kind words nor angry cries<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Turn away this grim spoilsport;</span><br /> +No fine lady's pleading eyes,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Neither love, nor hate, nor ... port.</span></p> +<p>Critics wears no smile of fun,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Speaks no word of blame nor praise,</span><br /> +Counts our kisses one by one,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Notes each gesture, every phrase.</span></p> +<p>My familiar ghost again<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Stands or squats where suits him best;</span><br /> +Critic, son of Conscious Brain,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Listens, watches, takes no rest.</span> +</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="shiver"></a><h2>THE SHIVERING BEGGAR</h2> +<p>Near Clapham village, where fields began,<br /> +Saint Edward met a beggar man.<br /> +It was Christmas morning, the church bells tolled,<br /> +The old man trembled for the fierce cold.</p> +<p>Saint Edward cried, "It is monstrous sin<br /> +A beggar to lie in rags so thin!<br /> +An old grey-beard and the frost so keen:<br /> +I shall give him my fur-lined gaberdine."</p> +<p>He stripped off his gaberdine of scarlet<br /> +And wrapped it round the aged varlet,<br /> +Who clutched at the folds with a muttered curse,<br /> +Quaking and chattering seven times worse.</p> +<p>Said Edward, "Sir, it would seem you freeze<br /> +Most bitter at your extremities.<br /> +Here are gloves and shoes and stockings also,<br /> +That warm upon your way you may go."</p> +<p>The man took stocking and shoe and glove,<br /> +Blaspheming Christ our Saviour's love,<br /> +Yet seemed to find but little relief,<br /> +Shaking and shivering like a leaf.</p> +<p>Said the saint again, "I have no great riches,<br /> +Yet take this tunic, take these breeches,<br /> +My shirt and my vest, take everything,<br /> +And give due thanks to Jesus the King."</p> +<p>The saint stood naked upon the snow<br /> +Long miles from where he was lodged at Bowe,<br /> +Praying, "O God! my faith, it grows faint!<br /> +This would try the temper of any saint.</p> +<p>"Make clean my heart, Almighty, I pray,<br /> +And drive these sinful thoughts away.<br /> +Make clean my heart if it be Thy will,<br /> +This damned old rascal's shivering still!"</p> +<p>He stooped, he touched the beggar man's shoulder;<br /> +He asked him did the frost nip colder?<br /> +"Frost!" said the beggar, "no, stupid lad!<br /> +'Tis the palsy makes me shiver so bad."</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="jonah"></a><h2>JONAH</h2> +<p>A purple whale<br /> +Proudly sweeps his tail<br /> +Towards Nineveh;<br /> +Glassy green<br /> +Surges between<br /> +A mile of roaring sea.</p> +<p>"O town of gold,<br /> +Of splendour multifold,<br /> +Lucre and lust,<br /> +Leviathan's eye<br /> +Can surely spy<br /> +Thy doom of death and dust."</p> +<p>On curving sands<br /> +Vengeful Jonah stands.<br /> +"Yet forty days,<br /> +Then down, down,<br /> +Tumbles the town<br /> +In flaming ruin ablaze."</p> +<p>With swift lament<br /> +Those Ninevites repent.<br /> +They cry in tears,<br /> +"Our hearts fail!<br /> +The whale, the whale!<br /> +Our sins prick us like spears."</p> +<p>Jonah is vexed;<br /> +He cries, "What next? what next?"<br /> +And shakes his fist.<br /> +"Stupid city,<br /> +The shame, the pity,<br /> +The glorious crash I've missed."</p> +<p>Away goes Jonah grumbling,<br /> +Murmuring and mumbling;<br /> +Off ploughs the purple whale,<br /> +With disappointed tail.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="skelton"></a><h2>JOHN SKELTON</h2> +<p>What could be dafter<br /> +Than John Skelton's laughter?<br /> +What sound more tenderly<br /> +Than his pretty poetry?<br /> +So where to rank old Skelton?<br /> +He was no monstrous Milton,<br /> +Nor wrote no "Paradise Lost,"<br /> +So wondered at by most,<br /> +Phrased so disdainfully,<br /> +Composed so painfully.<br /> +He struck what Milton missed,<br /> +Milling an English grist<br /> +With homely turn and twist.<br /> +He was English through and through,<br /> +Not Greek, nor French, nor Jew,<br /> +Though well their tongues he knew,<br /> +The living and the dead:<br /> +Learned Erasmus said,<br /> +<i>Hie 'unum Britannicarum<br /> +Lumen et decus literarum.</i><br /> +But oh, Colin Clout!<br /> +How his pen flies about,<br /> +Twiddling and turning,<br /> +Scorching and burning,<br /> +Thrusting and thrumming!<br /> +How it hurries with humming,<br /> +Leaping and running,<br /> +At the tipsy-topsy Tunning<br /> +Of Mistress Eleanor Rumming!<br /> +How for poor Philip Sparrow<br /> +Was murdered at Carow,<br /> +How our hearts he does harrow<br /> +Jest and grief mingle<br /> +In this jangle-jingle,<br /> +For he will not stop<br /> +To sweep nor mop,<br /> +To prune nor prop,<br /> +To cut each phrase up<br /> +Like beef when we sup,<br /> +Nor sip at each line<br /> +As at brandy-wine,<br /> +Or port when we dine.<br /> +But angrily, wittily,<br /> +Tenderly, prettily,<br /> +Laughingly, learnedly,<br /> +Sadly, madly,<br /> +Helter-skelter John<br /> +Rhymes serenely on,<br /> +As English poets should.<br /> +Old John, you do me good!</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="drowned"></a><h2>I WONDER WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE DROWNED?</h2> +<p>Look at my knees,<br /> +That island rising from the steamy seas!<br /> +The candles a tall lightship; my two hands<br /> +Are boats and barges anchored to the sands,<br /> +With mighty cliffs all round;<br /> +They're full of wine and riches from far lands....<br /> +<i>I wonder what it feels like to be drowned?</i></p> +<p>I can make caves,<br /> +By lifting up the island and huge waves<br /> +And storms, and then with head and ears well under<br /> +Blow bubbles with a monstrous roar like thunder,<br /> +A bull-of-Bashan sound.<br /> +The seas run high and the boats split asunder....<br /> +<i>I wonder what it feels like to be drowned?</i></p> +<p>The thin soap slips<br /> +And slithers like a shark under the ships.<br /> +My toes are on the soap-dish—that's the effect<br /> +Of my huge storms; an iron steamer's wrecked.<br /> +The soap slides round and round;<br /> +He's biting the old sailors, I expect....<br /> +<i>I wonder what it feels like to be drowned?</i></p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="redaisy"></a><h2>DOUBLE RED DAISIES</h2> +<p>Double red daisies, they're my flowers,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Which nobody else may grow.</span><br /> +In a big quarrelsome house like ours<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">They try it sometimes—but no,</span><br /> +I root them up because they're my flowers,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Which nobody else may grow.</span></p> +<p><i>Claire has a tea-rose, but she didn't plant it;<br /> +Ben has an iris, but I don't want it.<br /> +Daisies, double red daisies for me,<br /> +The beautifulest flowers in the garden.</i></p> +<p>Double red daisy, that's my mark:<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">I paint it in all my books!</span><br /> +It's carved high up on the beech-tree bark,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">How neat and lovely it looks!</span><br /> +So don't forget that it's my trade mark;<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Don't copy it in your books.</span></p> +<p><i>Claire has a tea-rose, but she didn't plant it;<br /> +Ben has an iris, but I don't want it.<br /> +Daisies, double red daisies for me,<br /> +The beautifulest flowers in the garden.</i></p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="careers"></a><h2>CAREERS</h2> +<p>Father is quite the greatest poet<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">That ever lived anywhere.</span><br /> +You say you're going to write great music—<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">I chose that first: it's unfair.</span><br /> +Besides, now I can't be the greatest painter and<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">do Christ and angels, or lovely pears</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">and apples and grapes on a green dish,</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">or storms at sea, or anything lovely,</span><br /> +Because that's been taken by Claire.</p> +<p>It's stupid to be an engine-driver,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">And soldiers are horrible men.</span><br /> +I won't be a tailor, I won't be a sailor,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">And gardener's taken by Ben.</span><br /> +It's unfair if you say that you'll write great<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">music, you horrid, you unkind (I simply</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">loathe you, though you are my</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">sister), you beast, cad, coward, cheat,</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">bully, liar!</span><br /> +Well? Say what's left for me then!<br /> +But <i>we</i> won't go to your ugly music.<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">(Listen!) Ben will garden and dig,</span><br /> +And Claire will finish her wondrous pictures<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">All flaming and splendid and big.</span></p> +<p>And I'll be a perfectly marvellous carpenter,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">and I'll make cupboards and benches</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">and tables and ... and baths, and</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">nice wooden boxes for studs and</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">money,</span><br /> +And you'll be jealous, you pig!</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="fairychild"></a><h2>I'D LOVE TO BE A FAIRY'S CHILD</h2> +<p>Children born of fairy stock<br /> +Never need for shirt or frock,<br /> +Never want for food or fire,<br /> +Always get their heart's desire:<br /> +Jingle pockets full of gold,<br /> +Marry when they're seven years old.<br /> +Every fairy child may keep<br /> +Two strong ponies and ten sheep;<br /> +All have houses, each his own,<br /> +Built of brick or granite stone;<br /> +They live on cherries, they run wild—<br /> +I'd love to be a Fairy's child.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="nextwar"></a><h2>THE NEXT WAR</h2> +<p>You young friskies who today<br /> +Jump and fight in Father's hay<br /> +With bows and arrows and wooden spears,<br /> +Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers,<br /> +Happy though these hours you spend,<br /> +Have they warned you how games end?<br /> +Boys, from the first time you prod<br /> +And thrust with spears of curtain-rod,<br /> +From the first time you tear and slash<br /> +Your long-bows from the garden ash,<br /> +Or fit your shaft with a blue jay feather,<br /> +Binding the split tops together,<br /> +From that same hour by fate you're bound<br /> +As champions of this stony ground,<br /> +Loyal and true in everything,<br /> +To serve your Army and your King,<br /> +Prepared to starve and sweat and die<br /> +Under some fierce foreign sky,<br /> +If only to keep safe those joys<br /> +That belong to British boys,<br /> +To keep young Prussians from the soft<br /> +Scented hay of father's loft,<br /> +And stop young Slavs from cutting bows<br /> +And bendy spears from Welsh hedgerows.<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Another War soon gets begun,</span><br /> +A dirtier, a more glorious one;<br /> +Then, boys, you'll have to play, all in;<br /> +It's the cruellest team will win.<br /> +So hold your nose against the stink<br /> +And never stop too long to think.<br /> +Wars don't change except in name;<br /> +The next one must go just the same,<br /> +And new foul tricks unguessed before<br /> +Will win and justify this War.<br /> +Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage<br /> +Once more with pomp and greed and rage;<br /> +Courtly ministers will stop<br /> +At home and fight to the last drop;<br /> +By the million men will die<br /> +In some new horrible agony;<br /> +And children here will thrust and poke,<br /> +Shoot and die, and laugh at the joke,<br /> +With bows and arrows and wooden spears,<br /> +Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="strongbeer"></a><h2>STRONG BEER</h2> +<p>"What do you think<br /> +The bravest drink<br /> +Under the sky?"<br /> +"Strong beer," said I.</p> +<p>"There's a place for everything,<br /> +Everything, anything,<br /> +There's a place for everything<br /> +Where it ought to be:<br /> +For a chicken, the hen's wing;<br /> +For poison, the bee's sting;<br /> +For almond-blossom, Spring;<br /> +A beerhouse for me."</p> +<p>"There's a prize for every one<br /> +Every one, any one,<br /> +There's a prize for every one,<br /> +Whoever he may be:<br /> +Crags for the mountaineer,<br /> +Flags for the Fusilier,<br /> +For English poets, beer!<br /> +Strong beer for me!"</p> +<p>"Tell us, now, how and when<br /> +We may find the bravest men?"<br /> +"A sure test, an easy test:<br /> +Those that drink beer are the best,<br /> +Brown beer strongly brewed,<br /> +English drink and English food."</p> +<p>Oh, never choose as Gideon chose<br /> +By the cold well, but rather those<br /> +Who look on beer when it is brown,<br /> +Smack their lips and gulp it down.<br /> +Leave the lads who tamely drink<br /> +With Gideon by the water brink,<br /> +But search the benches of the Plough,<br /> +The Tun, the Sun, the Spotted Cow,<br /> +For jolly rascal lads who pray,<br /> +Pewter in hand, at close of day,<br /> +"Teach me to live that I may fear<br /> +The grave as little as my beer."</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="marigolds"></a><h2>MARIGOLDS</h2> +<p>With a fork drive Nature out,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">She will ever yet return;</span><br /> +Hedge the flowerbed all about,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Pull or stab or cut or burn,</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">She will ever yet return.</span></p> +<p>Look: the constant marigold<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Springs again from hidden roots.</span><br /> +Baffled gardener, you behold<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">New beginnings and new shoots</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Spring again from hidden roots.</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Pull or stab or cut or burn,</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">They will ever yet return.</span></p> +<p>Gardener, cursing at the weed,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Ere you curse it further, say:</span><br /> +Who but you planted the seed<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">In my fertile heart, one day?</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Ere you curse me further, say!</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">New beginnings and new shoots</span><br /> +String again from hidden roots<br /> +Pull or stab or cut or burn,<br /> +Love must ever yet return.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="pauper"></a><h2>THE LADY VISITOR IN THE PAUPER WARD</h2> +<p>Why do you break upon this old, cool peace,<br /> +This painted peace of ours,<br /> +With harsh dress hissing like a flock of geese,<br /> +With garish flowers?<br /> +Why do you churn smooth waters rough again,<br /> +Selfish old skin-and-bone?<br /> +Leave us to quiet dreaming and slow pain,<br /> +Leave us alone.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="magic"></a><h2>LOVE AND BLACK MAGIC</h2> +<p>To the woods, to the woods is the wizard gone;<br /> +In his grotto the maiden sits alone.<br /> +She gazes up with a weary smile<br /> +At the rafter-hanging crocodile,<br /> +The slowly swinging crocodile.<br /> +Scorn has she of her master's gear,<br /> +Cauldron, alembic, crystal sphere,<br /> +Phial, philtre—"Fiddlededee<br /> +For all such trumpery trash!" quo' she.<br /> +"A soldier is the lad for me;<br /> +Hey and hither, my lad!</p> +<p>"Oh, here have I ever lain forlorn:<br /> +My father died ere I was born,<br /> +Mother was by a wizard wed,<br /> +And oft I wish I had died instead—<br /> +Often I wish I were long time dead.<br /> +But, delving deep in my master's lore,<br /> +I have won of magic power such store<br /> +I can turn a skull—oh, fiddlededee<br /> +For all this curious craft!" quo' she.<br /> +"A soldier is the lad for me;<br /> +Hey and hither, my lad!</p> +<p>"To bring my brave boy unto my arms,<br /> +What need have I of magic charms—<br /> +'Abracadabra!' and 'Prestopuff'?<br /> +I have but to wish, and that is enough.<br /> +The charms are vain, one wish is enough.<br /> +My master pledged my hand to a wizard;<br /> +Transformed would I be to toad or lizard<br /> +If e'er he guessed—but fiddlededee<br /> +For a black-browed sorcerer, now," quo' she.<br /> +"Let Cupid smile and the fiend must flee;<br /> +Hey and hither, my lad."</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="smokering"></a><h2>SMOKE-RINGS</h2> +<p>BOY<br /> +Most venerable and learned sir,<br /> +Tall and true Philosopher,<br /> +These rings of smoke you blow all day<br /> +With such deep thought, what sense have they?</p> +<p>PHILOSOPHER<br /> +Small friend, with prayer and meditation<br /> +I make an image of Creation.<br /> +And if your mind is working nimble<br /> +Straightway you'll recognize a symbol<br /> +Of the endless and eternal ring<br /> +Of God, who girdles everything—<br /> +God, who in His own form and plan<br /> +Moulds the fugitive life of man.<br /> +These vaporous toys you watch me make,<br /> +That shoot ahead, pause, turn and break—<br /> +Some glide far out like sailing ships,<br /> +Some weak ones fail me at my lips.<br /> +He who ringed His awe in smoke,<br /> +When He led forth His captive folk,<br /> +In like manner, East, West, North, and South,<br /> +Blows us ring-wise from His mouth.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="nightmare"></a><h2>A CHILD'S NIGHTMARE</h2> +<p>Through long nursery nights he stood<br /> +By my bed unwearying,<br /> +Loomed gigantic, formless, queer,<br /> +Purring in my haunted ear<br /> +That same hideous nightmare thing,<br /> +Talking, as he lapped my blood,<br /> +In a voice cruel and flat,<br /> +Saying for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat! ..."</p> +<p>That one word was all he said,<br /> +That one word through all my sleep,<br /> +In monotonous mock despair.<br /> +Nonsense may be light as air,<br /> +But there's Nonsense that can keep<br /> +Horror bristling round the head,<br /> +When a voice cruel and flat<br /> +Says for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."</p> +<p>He had faded, he was gone<br /> +Years ago with Nursery Land<br /> +When he leapt on me again<br /> +From the clank of a night train,<br /> +Overpowered me foot and head,<br /> +Lapped my blood, while on and on<br /> +The old voice cruel and flat<br /> +Says for ever, "Cat!... Cat!... Cat!..."</p> +<p>Morphia drowsed, again I lay<br /> +In a crater by High Wood:<br /> +He was there with straddling legs,<br /> +Staring eyes as big as eggs,<br /> +Purring as he lapped my blood,<br /> +His black bulk darkening the day,<br /> +With a voice cruel and flat,<br /> +"Cat!... Cat!... Cat!..." he said,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">"Cat!... Cat!..."</span></p> +<p>When I'm shot through heart and head,<br /> +And there's no choice but to die,<br /> +The last word I'll hear, no doubt,<br /> +Won't be "Charge!" or "Bomb them out!"<br /> +Nor the stretcher-bearer's cry,<br /> +"Let that body be, he's dead!"<br /> +But a voice cruel and flat<br /> +Saying for ever, "Cat!... Cat!... Cat!"</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="escape"></a><h2>ESCAPE</h2> +<p>(<i>August</i> 6, 1916.—Officer previously reported died of<br /> +wounds, now reported wounded: Graves, Captain R.,<br /> +Royal Welch Fusiliers.)<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.25em;">... But I <i>was</i> dead, an hour or more.</span><br /> +I woke when I'd already passed the door<br /> +That Cerberus guards, and half-way down the road<br /> +To Lethe, as an old Greek signpost showed.<br /> +Above me, on my stretcher swinging by,<br /> +I saw new stars in the subterrene sky:<br /> +A Cross, a Rose in bloom, a Cage with bars,<br /> +And a barbed Arrow feathered in fine stars.<br /> +I felt the vapours of forgetfulness<br /> +Float in my nostrils. Oh, may Heaven bless<br /> +Dear Lady Proserpine, who saw me wake,<br /> +And, stooping over me, for Henna's sake<br /> +Cleared my poor buzzing head and sent me back<br /> +Breathless, with leaping heart along the track.<br /> +After me roared and clattered angry hosts<br /> +Of demons, heroes, and policeman-ghosts.<br /> +"Life! life! I can't be dead! I won't be dead!<br /> +Damned if I'll die for any one!" I said....<br /> +Cerberus stands and grins above me now,<br /> +Wearing three heads—lion, and lynx, and sow.<br /> +"Quick, a revolver! But my Webley's gone,<br /> +Stolen!... No bombs ... no knife....<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">The crowd swarms on,</span><br /> +Bellows, hurls stones.... Not even a honeyed sop ...<br /> +Nothing.... Good Cerberus!... Good dog!... but stop!<br /> +Stay!... A great luminous thought ... I do believe<br /> +There's still some morphia that I bought on leave."<br /> +Then swiftly Cerberus' wide mouths I cram<br /> +With army biscuit smeared with ration jam;</p> + +<p>And sleep lurks in the luscious plum and apple.<br /> +He crunches, swallows, stiffens, seems to grapple<br /> +With the all-powerful poppy ... then a snore,<br /> +A crash; the beast blocks up the corridor<br /> +With monstrous hairy carcase, red and dun—<br /> +Too late! for I've sped through.<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">O Life! O Sun!</span> +</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="nonsense"></a><h2>THE BOUGH OF NONSENSE</h2><br /> +An Idyll<p></p> +<p>Back from the Somme two Fusiliers<br /> +Limped painfully home; the elder said,<br /> +<i>S</i>. "Robert, I've lived three thousand years<br /> +This Summer, and I'm nine parts dead."<br /> +<i>R</i>. "But if that's truly so," I cried, "quick, now,<br /> +Through these great oaks and see the famous bough</p> +<p>"Where once a nonsense built her nest<br /> +With skulls and flowers and all things queer,<br /> +In an old boot, with patient breast<br /> +Hatching three eggs; and the next year ..."<br /> +<i>S</i>. "Foaled thirteen squamous young beneath, and rid<br /> +Wales of drink, melancholy, and psalms, she did."</p> +<p>Said he, "Before this quaint mood fails,<br /> +We'll sit and weave a nonsense hymn,"<br /> +<i>R</i>. "Hanging it up with monkey tails<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">In a deep grove all hushed and dim...."</span><br /> +<i>S</i>. "To glorious yellow-bunched banana-trees,"<br /> +<i>R</i>. "Planted in dreams by pious Portuguese,"</p> +<p><i>S</i>. "Which men are wise beyond their time,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">And worship nonsense, no one more."</span><br /> +<i>R</i>. "Hard by, among old quince and lime,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">They've built a temple with no floor,"</span><br /> +<i>S</i>. "And whosoever worships in that place,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">He disappears from sight and leaves no trace."</span></p> +<p><i>R</i>. "Once the Galatians built a fane<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">To Sense: what duller God than that?"</span><br /> +<i>S</i>. "But the first day of autumn rain<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">The roof fell in and crushed them flat."</span><br /> +<i>R</i>. "Ay, for a roof of subtlest logic falls<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">When nonsense is foundation for the walls."</span> +</p> +<p>I tell him old Galatian tales;<br /> +He caps them in quick Portuguese,<br /> +While phantom creatures with green scales<br /> +Scramble and roll among the trees.<br /> +The hymn swells; on a bough above us sings<br /> +A row of bright pink birds, flapping their wings.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="notdead"></a><h2>NOT DEAD</h2> +<p>Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain,<br /> +I know that David's with me here again.<br /> +All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.<br /> +Caressingly I stroke<br /> +Rough hark of the friendly oak.<br /> +A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his.<br /> +Turf burns with pleasant smoke;<br /> +I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses.<br /> +All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.<br /> +Over the whole wood in a little while<br /> +Breaks his slow smile.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="church"></a><h2>A BOY IN CHURCH</h2> +<p>"Gabble-gabble,... brethren,... gabble-gabble!"<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">My window frames forest and heather.</span><br /> +I hardly hear the tuneful babble,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Not knowing nor much caring whether</span><br /> +The text is praise or exhortation,<br /> +Prayer or thanksgiving, or damnation.</p> +<p>Outside it blows wetter and wetter,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">The tossing trees never stay still.</span><br /> +I shift my elbows to catch better<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">The full round sweep of heathered hill.</span><br /> +The tortured copse bends to and fro<br /> +In silence like a shadow-show.</p> +<p>The parson's voice runs like a river<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Over smooth rocks. I like this church:</span><br /> +The pews are staid, they never shiver,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">They never bend or sway or lurch.</span><br /> +"Prayer," says the kind voice, "is a chain<br /> +That draws down Grace from Heaven again."</p> +<p>I add the hymns up, over and over,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">Until there's not the least mistake.</span><br /> +Seven-seventy-one. (Look! there's a plover!<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">It's gone!) Who's that Saint by the lake?</span><br /> +The red light from his mantle passes<br /> +Across the broad memorial brasses.</p> +<p>It's pleasant here for dreams and thinking,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">Lolling and letting reason nod,</span><br /> +With ugly serious people linking<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">Sad prayers to a forgiving God....</span><br /> +But a dumb blast sets the trees swaying<br /> +With furious zeal like madmen praying.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="corporal"></a><h2>CORPORAL STARE</h2> +<p>Back from the line one night in June,<br /> +I gave a dinner at Bethune—<br /> +Seven courses, the most gorgeous meal<br /> +Money could buy or batman steal.<br /> +Five hungry lads welcomed the fish<br /> +With shouts that nearly cracked the dish;<br /> +Asparagus came with tender tops,<br /> +Strawberries in cream, and mutton chops.<br /> +Said Jenkins, as my hand he shook,<br /> +"They'll put this in the history book."<br /> +We bawled Church anthems <i>in choro</i><br /> +Of Bethlehem and Hermon snow,<br /> +With drinking songs, a jolly sound<br /> +To help the good red Pommard round.<br /> +Stories and laughter interspersed,<br /> +We drowned a long La Bassée thirst—<br /> +Trenches in June make throats damned dry.<br /> +Then through the window suddenly,<br /> +Badge, stripes and medals all complete,<br /> +We saw him swagger up the street,<br /> +Just like a live man—Corporal Stare!<br /> +Stare! Killed last May at Festubert.<br /> +Caught on patrol near the Boche wire,<br /> +Tom horribly by machine-gun fire!<br /> +He paused, saluted smartly, grinned,<br /> +Then passed away like a puff of wind,<br /> +Leaving us blank astonishment.<br /> +The song broke, up we started, leant<br /> +Out of the window—nothing there,<br /> +Not the least shadow of Corporal Stare,<br /> +Only a quiver of smoke that showed<br /> +A fag-end dropped on the silent road.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="heroic"></a><h2>THE ASSAULT HEROIC</h2> +<p>Down in the mud I lay,<br /> +Tired out by my long day<br /> +Of five damned days and nights,<br /> +Five sleepless days and nights, ...<br /> +Dream-snatched, and set me where<br /> +The dungeon of Despair<br /> +Looms over Desolate Sea,<br /> +Frowning and threatening me<br /> +With aspect high and steep—<br /> +A most malignant keep.<br /> +My foes that lay within<br /> +Shouted and made a din,<br /> +Hooted and grinned and cried:<br /> +"Today we've killed your pride;<br /> +Today your ardour ends.<br /> +We've murdered all your friends;<br /> +We've undermined by stealth<br /> +Your happiness and your health.<br /> +We've taken away your hope;<br /> +Now you may droop and mope<br /> +To misery and to Death."<br /> +But with my spear of Faith,<br /> +Stout as an oaken rafter,<br /> +With my round shield of laughter,<br /> +With my sharp, tongue-like sword<br /> +That speaks a bitter word,<br /> +I stood beneath the wall<br /> +And there defied them all.<br /> +The stones they cast I caught<br /> +And alchemized with thought<br /> +Into such lumps of gold<br /> +As dreaming misers hold.<br /> +The boiling oil they threw<br /> +Fell in a shower of dew,<br /> +Refreshing me; the spears<br /> +Flew harmless by my ears,<br /> +Struck quivering in the sod;<br /> +There, like the prophet's rod,<br /> +Put leaves out, took firm root,<br /> +And bore me instant fruit.<br /> +My foes were all astounded,<br /> +Dumbstricken and confounded,<br /> +Gaping in a long row;<br /> +They dared not thrust nor throw.<br /> +Thus, then, I climbed a steep<br /> +Buttress and won the keep,<br /> +And laughed and proudly blew<br /> +My horn, <i>"Stand to! Stand to!<br /> +Wake up, sir! Here's a new<br /> +Attack! Stand to! Stand to!"</i></p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="poetnursery"></a><h2>THE POET IN THE NURSERY</h2> +<p>The youngest poet down the shelves was fumbling<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">In a dim library, just behind the chair</span><br /> +From which the ancient poet was mum-mumbling<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">A song about some Lovers at a Fair,</span><br /> +Pulling his long white beard and gently grumbling<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">That rhymes were beastly things and never there.</span></p> +<p>And as I groped, the whole time I was thinking<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">About the tragic poem I'd been writing,...</span><br /> +An old man's life of beer and whisky drinking,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">His years of kidnapping and wicked fighting;</span><br /> +And how at last, into a fever sinking,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Remorsefully he died, his bedclothes biting.</span></p> +<p>But suddenly I saw the bright green cover<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Of a thin pretty book right down below;</span><br /> +I snatched it up and turned the pages over,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">To find it full of poetry, and so</span><br /> +Put it down my neck with quick hands like a lover,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">And turned to watch if the old man saw it go.</span></p> +<p>The book was full of funny muddling mazes,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Each rounded off into a lovely song,</span><br /> +And most extraordinary and monstrous phrases<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Knotted with rhymes like a slave-driver's thong.</span><br /> +And metre twisting like a chain of daisies<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">With great big splendid words a sentence long.</span></p> +<p>I took the book to bed with me and gloated,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Learning the lines that seemed to sound most grand;</span><br /> +So soon the pretty emerald green was coated<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">With jam and greasy marks from my hot hand,</span><br /> +While round the nursery for long months there floated<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Wonderful words no one could understand.</span> +</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="wilderness"></a><h2>IN THE WILDERNESS</h2> +<p>Christ of His gentleness<br /> +Thirsting and hungering,<br /> +Walked in the wilderness;<br /> +Soft words of grace He spoke<br /> +Unto lost desert-folk<br /> +That listened wondering.<br /> +He heard the bitterns call<br /> +From ruined palace-wall,<br /> +Answered them brotherly.<br /> +He held communion<br /> +With the she-pelican<br /> +Of lonely piety.<br /> +Basilisk, cockatrice,<br /> +Flocked to his homilies,<br /> +With mail of dread device,<br /> +With monstrous barbéd slings,<br /> +With eager dragon-eyes;<br /> +Great rats on leather wings<br /> +And poor blind broken things,<br /> +Foul in their miseries.<br /> +And ever with Him went,<br /> +Of all His wanderings<br /> +Comrade, with ragged coat,<br /> +Gaunt ribs—poor innocent—<br /> +Bleeding foot, burning throat,<br /> +The guileless old scapegoat;<br /> +For forty nights and days<br /> +Followed in Jesus' ways,<br /> +Sure guard behind Him kept,<br /> +Tears like a lover wept.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="cherrytime"></a><h2>CHERRY-TIME</h2> +<p>Cherries of the night are riper<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">Than the cherries pluckt at noon</span><br /> +Gather to your fairy piper<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">When he pipes his magic tune:</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1.5em;">Merry, merry,</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1.5em;">Take a cherry;</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1.5em;">Mine are sounder,</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1.5em;">Mine are rounder,</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1.5em;">Mine are sweeter</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1.5em;">For the eater</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1.5em;">Under the moon.</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">And you'll be fairies soon.</span></p> +<p>In the cherry pluckt at night,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">With the dew of summer swelling,</span><br /> +There's a juice of pure delight,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">Cool, dark, sweet, divinely smelling.</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1.5em;">Merry, merry,</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1.5em;">Take a cherry;</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1.5em;">Mine are sounder,</span><br /> +Mine are rounder<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1.5em;">Mine are sweeter</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1.5em;">For the eater</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1.5em;">In the moonlight.</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">And you'll be fairies quite.</span></p> +<p>When I sound the fairy call,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Gather here in silent meeting,</span><br /> +Chin to knee on the orchard wall,<br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Cooled with dew and cherries eating.</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">Merry, merry,</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">Take a cherry;</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">Mine are sounder,</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">Mine are rounder,</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">Mine are sweeter.</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">For the eater</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1em;">When the dews fall.</span><br /> +<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">And you'll be fairies all.</span> +</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="1915"></a><h2>1915</h2> +<p>I've watched the Seasons passing slow, so slow,<br /> +In the fields between La Bassée and Bethune;<br /> +Primroses and the first warm day of Spring,<br /> +Red poppy floods of June,<br /> +August, and yellowing Autumn, so<br /> +To Winter nights knee-deep in mud or snow,<br /> +And you've been everything.</p> +<p>Dear, you've been everything that I most lack<br /> +In these soul-deadening trenches—pictures, books,<br /> +Music, the quiet of an English wood,<br /> +Beautiful comrade-looks,<br /> +The narrow, bouldered mountain-track,<br /> +The broad, full-bosomed ocean, green and black,<br /> +And Peace, and all that's good.</p> +<hr style="width: 35%;" /> +<a name="freeverse"></a><h2>FREE VERSE</h2> +<p>I now delight<br /> +In spite<br /> +Of the might<br /> +And the right<br /> +Of classic tradition,<br /> +In writing<br /> +And reciting<br /> +Straight ahead,<br /> +Without let or omission,<br /> +Just any little rhyme<br /> +In any little time<br /> +That runs in my head;<br /> +Because, I've said,<br /> +My rhymes no longer shall stand arrayed<br /> +Like Prussian soldiers on parade<br /> +That march,<br /> +Stiff as starch,<br /> +Foot to foot,<br /> +Boot to boot,<br /> +Blade to blade,<br /> +Button to button<br /> +Cheeks and chops and chins like mutton.<br /> +No! No!<br /> +My rhymes must go<br /> +Turn 'ee, twist 'ee,<br /> +Twinkling, frosty,<br /> +Will-o'-the-wisp-like, misty;<br /> +Rhymes I will make<br /> +Like Keats and Blake<br /> +And Christina Rossetti,<br /> +With run and ripple and shake.<br /> +How pretty<br /> +To take<br /> +A merry little rhyme<br /> +In a jolly little time<br /> +And poke it,<br /> +And choke it,<br /> +Change it, arrange it,<br /> +Straight-lace it, deface it,<br /> +Pleat it with pleats,<br /> +Sheet it with sheets<br /> +Of empty conceits,<br /> +And chop and chew,<br /> +And hack and hew,<br /> +And weld it into a uniform stanza,<br /> +And evolve a neat,<br /> +Complacent, complete,<br /> +Academic extravaganza!</p> +</td></tr></table> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr /> +<pre> + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAIRIES AND FUSILIERS*** + +******* This file should be named 10122-h.txt or 10122-h.zip ******* + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/1/2/10122">https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/1/2/10122</a> +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Fairies and Fusiliers + +Author: Robert Graves + +Release Date: November 18, 2003 [eBook #10122] + +Language: English + +Chatacter set encoding: US-ASCII + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAIRIES AND FUSILIERS*** + + +E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Sjaani, and Project Gutenberg Distributed +Proofreaders + + + +FAIRIES AND FUSILIERS + +BY + +ROBERT GRAVES + +1918 + + + + + + + + +TO + +THE ROYAL WELCH FUSILIERS + +_I have to thank Mr. Harold Monro, of The +Poetry Book Shop, for permission to include +in this volume certain poems of which he +possesses the copyright; also the editor of the +"Nation" for a similar courtesy._ + +R.G. + + + + +CONTENTS + +TO AN UNGENTLE CRITIC +AN OLD TWENTY-THIRD MAN +TO LUCASTA ON GOING TO THE WAR--FOR THE FOURTH TIME +TWO FUSILIERS +TO ROBERT NICHOLS +DEAD COW FARM +GOLIATH AND DAVID +BABYLON +MR. PHILOSOPHER +THE CRUEL MOON +FINLAND +A PINCH OF SALT +THE CATERPILLAR +SORLEY'S WEATHER +THE COTTAGE +THE LAST POST +WHEN I'M KILLED +LETTER TO S.S. FROM MAMETZ WOOD +A DEAD BOCHE +FAUN +THE SPOILSPORT +THE SHIVERING BEGGAR +JONAH +JOHN SKELTON +I WONDER WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE DROWNED? +DOUBLE RED DAISIES +CAREERS +I'D LOVE TO BE A FAIRY'S CHILD +THE NEXT WAR +STRONG BEER +MARIGOLDS +THE LADY VISITOR IN THE PAUPER WARD +LOVE AND BLACK MAGIC +SMOKE-RINGS +A CHILD'S NIGHTMARE +ESCAPE +THE BOUGH OF NONSENSE +NOT DEAD +A BOY IN CHURCH +CORPORAL STARE +THE ASSAULT HEROIC +THE POET IN THE NURSERY +IN THE WILDERNESS +CHERRY-TIME +1915 +FREE VERSE + + + + + +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. + + + + +AN OLD TWENTY-THIRD MAN + +"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 struggle + by, +The sullen pack of ragged ugly swine. +Is that the Legion, Gracchus? Quick, the + wine!" +"Strabo," said Gracchus, "you are strange tonight. +The Legion is the Legion; it's all right. +If these new men are slovenly, in your thinking, +God damn 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." + + + + +TO LUCASTA ON GOING TO THE WAR-- +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, +But let us do the things we do; + It's pride that makes the heart be great; +It is not anger, no, nor fear-- +Lucasta he's a Fusilier, + And his pride keeps him here. + + + + +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 red bond of blood, +By friendship, blossoming from mud, +By Death: we faced him, and we found +Beauty in Death, +In dead men breath. + + + + +TO ROBERT NICHOLS + +(From Frise on the Somme in February, 1917, in answer +to a letter saying: "I am just finishing my 'Faun's +Holiday.' I wish you were here to feed him with +cherries.") + + +Here by a snowbound river +In scrapen holes we shiver, +And like old bitterns we +Boom to you plaintively: +Robert how can I rhyme +Verses for 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, +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 dream is pain? +No, Robert, there's no reason: +Cherries are out of season, +Ice grips at branch and root, +And singing birds are mute. + + + + +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, +Primeval mud, cold stones and rain. +Here flesh decays and blood drips red, +And the Cow's dead, the old Cow's dead. + + + + +GOLIATH AND DAVID + +(FOR D.C.T., KILLED AT FRICOURT, MARCH, +1916) + + +Yet once an earlier David took +Smooth pebbles from the brook: +Out between the lines he went +To that one-sided tournament, +A shepherd boy who stood out fine +And young to fight a Philistine +Clad all in brazen mail. He swears +That he's killed lions, he's killed bears, +And those that scorn the God of Zion +Shall perish so like bear or lion. +But ... the historian of that fight +Had not the heart to tell it right. + +Striding within javelin range, +Goliath marvels at this strange +Goodly-faced boy so proud of strength. +David's clear eye measures the length; +With hand thrust back, he cramps one knee, +Poises a moment thoughtfully, +And hurls with a long vengeful swing. +The pebble, humming from the sling +Like a wild bee, flies a sure line +For the forehead of the Philistine; +Then ... but there comes a brazen clink, +And quicker than a man can think +Goliath's shield parries each cast. +Clang! clang! and clang! was David's last. +Scorn blazes in the Giant's eye, +Towering unhurt six cubits high. +Says foolish David, "Damn your shield! +And damn my sling! but I'll not yield." +He takes his staff of Mamre oak, +A knotted shepherd-staff that's broke +The skull of many a wolf and fox +Come filching lambs from Jesse's flocks. +Loud laughs Goliath, and that laugh +Can scatter chariots like blown chaff +To rout; but David, calm and brave, +Holds his ground, for God will save. +Steel crosses wood, a flash, and oh! +Shame for beauty's overthrow! +(God's eyes are dim, His ears are shut.) +One cruel backhand sabre-cut +"I'm hit! I'm killed!" young David cries, +Throws blindly forward, chokes ... and dies. +And look, spike-helmeted, grey, grim, +Goliath straddles over him. + + + + +BABYLON + +The child alone a poet is: +Spring and Fairyland are his. +Truth and Reason show but dim, +And all's poetry with him. +Rhyme and music flow in plenty +For the lad of one-and-twenty, +But Spring for him is no more now +Than daisies to a munching cow; +Just a cheery pleasant season, +Daisy buds to live at ease on. +He's forgotten how he smiled +And shrieked at snowdrops when a child, +Or wept one evening secretly +For April's glorious misery. +Wisdom made him old and wary +Banishing the Lords of Faery. +Wisdom made a breach and battered +Babylon to bits: she scattered +To the hedges and ditches +All our nursery gnomes and witches. +Lob and Puck, poor frantic elves, +Drag their treasures from the shelves. +Jack the Giant-killer's gone, +Mother Goose and Oberon, +Bluebeard and King Solomon. +Robin, and Red Riding Hood +Take together to the wood, +And Sir Galahad lies hid +In a cave with Captain Kidd. +None of all the magic hosts, +None remain but a few ghosts +Of timorous heart, to linger on +Weeping for lost Babylon. + + + + +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. + + + + +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. + + + + +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. + + + + +A PINCH OF SALT + +When a dream is born in you + With a sudden clamorous pain, +When you know the dream is true + And lovely, with no flaw nor stain, +O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch +You'll hurt the delicate thing you prize so much. + +Dreams are like a bird that mocks, + Flirting the feathers of his tail. +When you seize at the salt-box + Over the hedge you'll see him sail. +Old birds are neither caught with salt nor chaff: +They watch you from the apple bough and laugh. + +Poet, never chase the dream. + Laugh yourself and turn away. +Mask your hunger, let it seem +Small matter if he come or stay; +But when he nestles in your hand at last, +Close up your fingers tight and hold him fast. + + + + +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 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. + + + + +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. + + + + +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 LAST POST + +The bugler sent a call of high romance-- +"Lights out! Lights out!" to the deserted square. +On the thin brazen notes he threw a prayer, +"God, if it's _this_ for me next time in France ... +O spare the phantom bugle as I lie +Dead in the gas and smoke and roar of guns, +Dead in a row with the other broken ones +Lying so stiff and still under the sky, +Jolly young Fusiliers too good to die." + + + + +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. + + + + +LETTER TO S.S. FROM MAMETZ WOOD + +I never dreamed we'd meet that day +In our old haunts down Fricourt way, +Plotting such marvellous journeys there +For jolly old "Apres-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 +Snowden and Hebog capped with white, +And lots of other jolly 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 Ben and Claire once built for them; +They call it Soear 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 thumbprint close behind. +You'll see where Math, Mathonwy's son, +Spoke with the wizard Gwydion +And bad him from 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 awhile, +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 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 jolly peasants clad in furs +Will greet the Welch-ski officers +With open arms, and ere we pass +Will make us vocal 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! + + + + +A DEAD BOCHE + +To you who'd read my songs of War + And only hear of blood and fame, +I'll say (you've heard it said before) + "War's Hell!" and if you doubt the same, +Today I found in Mametz Wood +A certain cure for lust of blood: + +Where, propped against a shattered trunk, + In a great mess of things unclean, +Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk + With clothes and face a sodden green, +Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired, +Dribbling black blood from nose and beard. + + + + +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!" + +Today 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?" + + + + +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 tomorrow's book he'll score + Indiscretions of today. + +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. + +Critics 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 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." + + + + +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. + + + + +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, +_Hie '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! + + + + +I WONDER WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE DROWNED? + +Look at my knees, +That island rising from the steamy seas! +The candles 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?_ + + + + +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._ + + + + +CAREERS + +Father is quite the greatest poet + That ever lived anywhere. +You say you're going to write great music-- + I chose that first: it's unfair. +Besides, now I can't be the greatest painter and + do Christ and angels, or lovely pears + and apples and grapes on a green dish, + or storms at sea, or anything lovely, +Because that's been taken by Claire. + +It's stupid to be an engine-driver, + And soldiers are horrible men. +I won't be a tailor, I won't be a sailor, + And gardener's taken by Ben. +It's unfair if you say that you'll write great + music, you horrid, you unkind (I simply + loathe you, though you are my + sister), you beast, cad, coward, cheat, + bully, liar! +Well? Say what's left for me then! +But _we_ won't go to your ugly music. + (Listen!) Ben will garden and dig, +And Claire will finish her wondrous pictures + All flaming and splendid and big. + +And I'll be a perfectly marvellous carpenter, + and I'll make cupboards and benches + and tables and ... and baths, and + nice wooden boxes for studs and + money, +And you'll be jealous, you pig! + + + + +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. + + + + +THE NEXT WAR + +You young friskies who today +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. + + + + +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 every one +Every one, any one, +There's a prize for every one, +Whoever he may be: +Crags for the mountaineer, +Flags for the Fusilier, +For English poets, 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, +English drink and English 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." + + + + +MARIGOLDS + +With a fork drive Nature out, + She will ever yet return; +Hedge the flowerbed 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 +String again from hidden roots +Pull or stab or cut or burn, +Love must ever yet return. + + + + +THE LADY VISITOR IN THE PAUPER WARD + +Why do you break upon this old, cool peace, +This painted peace of ours, +With harsh dress hissing like a flock of geese, +With garish flowers? +Why do you churn smooth waters rough again, +Selfish old skin-and-bone? +Leave us to quiet dreaming and slow pain, +Leave us alone. + + + + +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." + + + + +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. + + + + +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 head, +Lapped my blood, while on and on +The old voice cruel and flat +Says 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!" + + + + +ESCAPE + +(_August_ 6, 1916.--Officer previously reported died of +wounds, now reported wounded: Graves, Captain R., +Royal Welch Fusiliers.) + + + ... But I _was_ dead, an hour or more. +I woke when I'd already passed the door +That Cerberus guards, and half-way down the road +To Lethe, as an old Greek signpost showed. +Above me, on my stretcher swinging by, +I saw new stars in the subterrene sky: +A Cross, a Rose in bloom, a Cage with bars, +And a barbed Arrow feathered in fine stars. +I felt the vapours of forgetfulness +Float in my nostrils. Oh, may Heaven bless +Dear Lady Proserpine, who saw me wake, +And, stooping over me, for Henna's sake +Cleared my poor buzzing head and sent me back +Breathless, with leaping heart along the track. +After me roared and clattered angry hosts +Of demons, heroes, and policeman-ghosts. +"Life! life! I can't be dead! I won't be dead! +Damned if I'll die for any one!" I said.... +Cerberus stands and grins above me now, +Wearing three heads--lion, and lynx, and sow. +"Quick, a revolver! But my Webley's gone, +Stolen!... No bombs ... no knife.... + The crowd swarms on, +Bellows, hurls stones.... Not even a honeyed sop ... +Nothing.... Good Cerberus!... Good dog!... but stop! +Stay!... A great luminous thought ... I do believe +There's still some morphia that I bought on leave." +Then swiftly Cerberus' wide mouths I cram +With army biscuit smeared with ration jam; + +And sleep lurks in the luscious plum and apple. +He crunches, swallows, stiffens, seems to grapple +With the all-powerful poppy ... then a snore, +A crash; the beast blocks up the corridor +With monstrous hairy carcase, red and dun-- +Too late! for I've sped through. + O Life! O Sun! + + + + +THE BOUGH OF NONSENSE + +An Idyll + +Back from the Somme two Fusiliers +Limped painfully home; the elder said, +_S_. "Robert, I've lived three thousand years +This Summer, and I'm nine parts dead." +_R_. "But if that's truly so," I cried, "quick, now, +Through these great oaks and see the famous bough + +"Where once a nonsense built her nest +With skulls and flowers and all things queer, +In an old boot, with patient breast +Hatching three eggs; and the next year ..." +_S_. "Foaled thirteen squamous young beneath, and rid +Wales of drink, melancholy, and psalms, she did." + +Said he, "Before this quaint mood fails, +We'll sit and weave a nonsense hymn," +_R_. "Hanging it up with monkey tails + In a deep grove all hushed and dim...." +_S_. "To glorious yellow-bunched banana-trees," +_R_. "Planted in dreams by pious Portuguese," + +_S_. "Which men are wise beyond their time, + And worship nonsense, no one more." +_R_. "Hard by, among old quince and lime, + They've built a temple with no floor," +_S_. "And whosoever worships in that place, + He disappears from sight and leaves no trace." + +_R_. "Once the Galatians built a fane + To Sense: what duller God than that?" +_S_. "But the first day of autumn rain + The roof fell in and crushed them flat." +_R_. "Ay, for a roof of subtlest logic falls + When nonsense is foundation for the walls." + + +I tell him old Galatian tales; +He caps them in quick Portuguese, +While phantom creatures with green scales +Scramble and roll among the trees. +The hymn swells; on a bough above us sings +A row of bright pink birds, flapping their wings. + + + + +NOT DEAD + +Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain, +I know that David's with me here again. +All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. +Caressingly I stroke +Rough hark of the friendly oak. +A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his. +Turf burns with pleasant smoke; +I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses. +All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. +Over the whole wood in a little while +Breaks his slow smile. + + + + +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. + + + + +CORPORAL STARE + +Back from the line one night in June, +I gave a dinner at Bethune-- +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, +With drinking songs, a jolly sound +To help the good red Pommard round. +Stories and laughter interspersed, +We drowned a long La Bassee 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 May at Festubert. +Caught on patrol near the Boche wire, +Tom 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. + + + + +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: +"Today we've killed your pride; +Today 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 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 beastly 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 pretty emerald green was coated + With jam and greasy marks from my hot hand, +While round the nursery for long months there floated + Wonderful words no one could understand. + + + + +IN THE WILDERNESS + +Christ 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 bitterns call +From ruined palace-wall, +Answered them brotherly. +He held communion +With the she-pelican +Of lonely piety. +Basilisk, cockatrice, +Flocked to his homilies, +With mail of dread device, +With monstrous barbed slings, +With eager dragon-eyes; +Great rats on leather wings +And poor blind broken things, +Foul in their miseries. +And ever with Him went, +Of all His wanderings +Comrade, with ragged coat, +Gaunt ribs--poor innocent-- +Bleeding foot, burning throat, +The guileless old scapegoat; +For forty nights and days +Followed in Jesus' ways, +Sure guard behind Him kept, +Tears like a lover wept. + + + + +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. + + + + +1915 + +I've watched the Seasons passing slow, so slow, +In the fields between La Bassee and Bethune; +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. + + + + +FREE VERSE + +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 pretty +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! + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAIRIES AND FUSILIERS*** + + +******* This file should be named 10122.txt or 10122.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/1/2/10122 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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