SOSPAN FACH
(The Little Saucepan)
Four collier lads from Ebbw Vale
Took shelter from a shower of hail,
And there beneath a spreading tree
Attuned their mouths to harmony.
With smiling joy on every face
Two warbled tenor, two sang bass,
And while the leaves above them hissed with
Rough hail, they started ‘Aberystwyth’.
Old Parry’s hymn, triumphant, rich,
They chanted through with even pitch,
Till at the end of their grand noise
I called: ‘Give us the “Sospan” boys!’
Who knows a tune so soft, so strong,
So pitiful as that ‘Saucepan’ song
For exiled hope, despaired desire
Of lost souls for their cottage fire?
Then low at first with gathering sound
Rose their four voices, smooth and round,
Till back went Time: once more I stood
With Fusiliers in Mametz Wood.
Fierce burned the sun, yet cheeks were pale,
For ice hail they had leaden hail;
In that fine forest, green and big,
There stayed unbroken not one twig.
They sang, they swore, they plunged in haste,
Stumbling and shouting through the waste;
The little ‘Saucepan’ flamed on high,
Emblem of hope and ease gone by.
Rough pit-boys from the coaly South,
They sang, even in the cannon’s mouth;
Like Sunday’s chapel, Monday’s inn,
The death-trap sounded with their din.
The storm blows over, Sun comes out,
The choir breaks up with jest and shout,
With what relief I watch them part –
Another note would break my heart!
THE LEVELLER
Near Martinpuisch that night of hell
Two men were struck by the same shell,
Together tumbling in one heap
Senseless and limp like slaughtered sheep.
One was a pale eighteen-year-old,
Blue-eyed and thin and not too bold,
Pressed for the war ten years too soon,
The shame and pity of his platoon.
The other came from far-off lands
With bristling chin and whiskered hands,
He had known death and hell before
In Mexico and Ecuador.
Yet in his death this cut-throat wild
Groaned ‘Mother! Mother!’ like a child,
While that poor innocent in man’s clothes
Died cursing God with brutal oaths.
Old Sergeant Smith, kindest of men,
Wrote out two copies there and then
Of his accustomed funeral speech
To cheer the womenfolk of each: –
‘He died a hero’s death: and we
His comrades of “A” Company
Deeply regret his death; we shall
All deeply miss so true a pal.’
HATE NOT, FEAR NOT
Kill if you must, but never hate:
Man is but grass and hate is blight,
The sun will scorch you soon or late,
Die wholesome then, since you must fight.
Hate is a fear, and fear is rot
That cankers root and fruit alike,
Fight cleanly then, hate not, fear not,
Strike with no madness when you strike.
Fever and fear distract the world,
But calm be you though madmen shout,
Through blazing fires of battle hurled,
Hate not, strike, fear not, stare Death out!
A RHYME OF FRIENDS
(In a Style Skeltonical)
Listen now this time
Shortly to my rhyme
That herewith starts
About certain kind hearts
In those stricken parts
That lie behind Calais,
Old crones and aged men
And young childrén.
About the Picardais,
Who earned my thousand thanks,
Dwellers by the banks
Of the mournful Somme
(God keep me therefrom
Until War ends) –
These, then, are my friends:
Madame Averlant Lune,
From the town of Béthune;
Good Professeur la Brune
From that town also.
He played the piccolo,
And left his locks to grow.
Dear Madame Hojdés,
Sempstress of Saint Fé.
With Jules and Suzette
And Antoinette,
Her children, my sweethearts,
For whom I made darts
Of paper to throw
In their mimic show,
‘La guerre aux tranchées’.
That was a pretty play.
There was old Jacques Caron,
Of the hamlet Mailleton.
He let me look
At his household book,
‘Comment vivre cent ans’.
What cares I took
To obey this wise book,
I, who feared each hour
Lest Death’s cruel power
On the poppied plain
Might make cares vain!
By Nœux-les-Mines
Lived old Adelphine,
Withered and clean,
She nodded and smiled,
And used me like a child.
How that old trot beguiled
My leisure with her chatter,
Gave me a china platter
Painted with Cherubim
And mottoes on the rim.
But when instead of thanks
I gave her francs
How her pride was hurt!
She counted francs as dirt,
(God knows, she was not rich)
She called the Kaiser bitch,
She spat on the floor,
Cursing this Prussian war,
That she had known before
Forty years past and more.
There was also ‘Tomi’,
With looks sweet and free,
Who called me cher ami.
This orphan’s age was nine,
His folk were in their graves,
Else they were slaves
Behind the German line
To terror and rapine –
O, little friends of mine
How kind and brave you were,
You smoothed away care
When life was hard to bear.
And you, old women and men,
Who gave me billets then,
How patient and great-hearted!
Strangers though we started,
Yet friends we ever parted.
God bless you all: now ends
This homage to my friends.
A FIRST REVIEW
Love, Fear and Hate and Childish Toys
Are here discreetly blent;
Admire, you ladies, read, you boys,
My Country Sentiment.
But Kate says, ‘Cut that anger and fear,
True love’s the stuff we need!
With laughing children and the running deer
That makes a book indeed.’
Then Tom, a hard and bloody chap,
Though much beloved by me,
‘Robert, have done with nursery pap,
Write like a man,’ says he.’
Hate and Fear are not wanted here,
Nor Toys nor Country Lovers,
Everything they took from my new poem book
But the flyleaf and the covers.
From The Pier-Glass
(1921)
THE STAKE
Naseboro’ held him guilty,
Crowther took his part,
Who lies at the cross-roads,
A stake through his heart.
S
pring calls, and the stake answers,
Throwing out shoots;
The towns debate what life is this
Sprung from such roots.
Naseboro’ says ‘A Upas Tree’;
‘A Rose,’ says Crowther;
But April’s here to declare it
Neither one nor other,
Neither ill nor very fair,
Rose nor Upas,
But an honest oak-tree,
As its parent was,
A green-tufted oak-tree
On the green wold,
Careless as the dead heart
That the roots enfold.
THE TROLL’S NOSEGAY
A simple nosegay! was that much to ask?
(Winter still nagged, with scarce a bud yet showing.)
He loved her ill, if he resigned the task.
‘Somewhere,’ she cried, ‘there must be blossom blowing.’
It seems my lady wept and the troll swore
By Heaven he hated tears: he’d cure her spleen –
Where she had begged one flower he’d shower fourscore,
A bunch fit to amaze a China Queen.
Cold fog-drawn Lily, pale mist-magic Rose
He conjured, and in a glassy cauldron set
With elvish unsubstantial Mignonette
And such vague bloom as wandering dreams enclose.
But she?
Awed,
Charmed to tears,
Distracted,
Yet –
Even yet, perhaps, a trifle piqued – who knows?
THE PIER-GLASS
Lost manor where I walk continually
A ghost, though yet in woman’s flesh and blood.
Up your broad stairs mounting with outspread fingers
And gliding steadfast down your corridors
I come by nightly custom to this room,
And even on sultry afternoons I come
Drawn by a thread of time-sunk memory.
Empty, unless for a huge bed of state
Shrouded with rusty curtains drooped awry
(A puppet theatre where malignant fancy
Peoples the wings with fear). At my right hand
A ravelled bell-pull hangs in readiness
To summon me from attic glooms above
Service of elder ghosts; here, at my left,
A sullen pier-glass, cracked from side to side,
Scorns to present the face (as do new mirrors)
With a lying flush, but shows it melancholy
And pale, as faces grow that look in mirrors.
Is there no life, nothing but the thin shadow
And blank foreboding, never a wainscot rat
Rasping a crust? Or at the window-pane
No fly, no bluebottle, no starveling spider?
The windows frame a prospect of cold skies
Half-merged with sea, as at the first creation –
Abstract, confusing welter. Face about,
Peer rather in the glass once more, take note
Of self, the grey lips and long hair dishevelled,
Sleep-staring eyes. Ah, mirror, for Christ’s love
Give me one token that there still abides
Remote – beyond this island mystery,
So be it only this side Hope, somewhere,
In streams, on sun-warm mountain pasturage –
True life, natural breath; not this phantasma.
THE FINDING OF LOVE
Pale at first and cold,
Like wizard’s lily-bloom
Conjured from the gloom,
Like torch of glow-worm seen
Through grasses shining green
By children half in fright,
Or Christmas candlelight
Flung on the outer snow,
Or tinsel stars that show
Their evening glory
With sheen of fairy story –
Now with his blaze
Love dries the cobweb maze
Dew-sagged upon the corn,
He brings the flowering thorn,
Mayfly and butterfly,
And pigeons in the sky,
Robin and thrush,
And the long bulrush,
Bird-cherry under the leaf,
Earth in a silken dress,
With end to grief,
With joy in steadfastness.
REPROACH
Your grieving moonlight face looks down
Through the forest of my fears,
Crowned with a spiny bramble-crown,
Bedewed with evening tears.
Why do you say ‘untrue, unkind’,
Reproachful eyes that vex my sleep?
Straining in memory, I can find
No cause why you should weep.
Untrue? But when, what broken oath?
Unkind? I know not even your name.
Unkind, untrue, you brand me both,
Scalding my heart with shame.
The black trees shudder, dropping snow,
The stars tumble and spin.
Speak, speak, or how may a child know
His ancestral sin?
THE MAGICAL PICTURE
Glinting on the roadway
A broken mirror lay:
Then what did the child say
Who found it there?
He cried there was a goblin
Looking out as he looked in –
Wild eyes and speckled skin,
Black, bristling hair!
He brought it to his father
Who being a simple sailor
Swore, ‘This is a true wonder,
Deny it who can!
Plain enough to me, for one,
It’s a portrait aptly done
Of Admiral, the great Lord Nelson
When a young man.’
The sailor’s wife perceiving
Her husband had some pretty thing
At which he was peering,
Then tears started and ran free,
‘Jack, you have deceived me,
I love you no more,’ said she,
‘So understand!’
‘But, Mary,’ says the sailor,
‘This is a famous treasure,
Admiral Nelson’s picture
Taken in youth.’
‘Viper and fox,’ she cries,
‘To trick me with such lies,
Who is this wench with the bold eyes?
Tell me the truth!’
Up rides the parish priest
Mounted on a fat beast.
Grief and anger have not ceased
Between those two;
Little Tom still weeps for fear;
He has seen Hobgoblin, near,
Great white teeth and foul leer
That pierced him through.
Now the old priest lifts his glove
Bidding all for God’s love
To stand and not to move,
Lest blood be shed.
‘O, O!’ cries the urchin,
‘I saw the devil grin,
He glared out, as I looked in;
A true death’s head!’
Mary weeps, ‘Ah, Father,
My Jack loves another!
On some voyage he courted her
In a land afar.’
This, with cursing, Jack denies: –
‘Father, use your own eyes:
It is Lord Nelson in disguise
As a young tar.’
When the priest took the glass,
Fresh marvels came to pass:
‘A saint of glory, by the Mass!
Where got you this?’
He signed him with the good Sign,
Be sure the relic was divine,
He would fix it in a shrine
For pilgrims to kiss.
There the chapel folk who come
(Honest, some, and lewd, some),
See the saint’s eyes and are dumb,
Kneeling on the flags.
Some see the Doubter Thomas,
And some Nathaniel in the glass,
And others whom but old Saint Judas
With his money bags?
DISTANT SMOKE
Seth and the sons of Seth who followed him
Halted in silence: labour, then, was vain.
Fast at the zenith, blazoned in his splendour,
Hung the fierce Sun, wherefore these travelling folk
Stood centred each in his own disc of shade.
The term proposed was ended; now to enjoy
The moment’s melancholy; their tears fell shining.
Yesterday early at the dreadful hour,
When life ebbs lowest, when the strand of being
Is slowly bared until discovered show
Weed-mantelled hulks that foundered years ago
At autumn anchorage, then father Adam
Summoned in haste his elder generations
To his death-tent, and gasping spoke to them,
Forthwith defining an immediate journey
Beyond the eastern ridge, in quest for one
Whom he named Cain, brother to Seth, true uncle
To these young spearmen; they should lead him here
For a last benediction at his hands.
First-born yet outlawed! Scarcely they believed
In this strange word of ‘Cain’, in this new man,
Man, yet outside the tents; but Adam swore
And gave them a fair sign of recognition.
There was a brand, he said, a firm red pillar
Parting Cain’s brows, and Cain had mighty hands,
Sprouting luxurious hair, red, like his beard.
Moreover Adam said that by huge strength
Himself could stay this ebb of early morning,
Yet three days longer, three days, though no more –
This for the stern desire and long disquietude
That was his love for Cain; whom God had cursed.
Then would he kiss all fatherly and so die –
Kneeling, with eyes abased, they made him promise,
Swore, at the midpoint of their second day,
If unsped in the search of whom he named,
They would come hasting home to Adam’s tent.
They touched his bony fingers; forth they went.
Now Seth, shielding his eyes, sees mistily
Breaking the horizon thirty miles away
(A full day’s journey) what but a wisp, a feather,
A thin line, half a nothing – distant smoke!
Blown smoke, a signal from that utmost ridge
Of desolation – the camp fire of Cain.
He to restrain his twelve impetuous sons
(He knows the razor-edge of their young spirit)
Dissembles seeing, turns his steps about,
Bids them come follow, but they little heeding,
Scarce noting his commands, fasten their eyes