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, ‘Curse your shield!
And curse 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.
Steel-helmeted and grey and grim
Goliath straddles over him.
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.
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 the 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.
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!
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.
THE LAST POST
(On Sick Leave)
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.’
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,
To-day 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.
ESCAPE
(August 6th, 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, half-way along 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 Key, 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 anyone!’ 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!
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 bark 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.
From Fairies and Fusiliers
(1917)
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.
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.
THE LEGION
‘Is that the Three-and-Twentieth, Strabo mine,
Marching below, and we still gulping wine?’
From the sad magic of his fragrant cup
The red-faced old centurion started up,
Cursed, battered on the table. ‘No,’ he said,
‘Not that! The Three-and-Twentieth Legion’s dead,
Dead in the first year of this damned campaign –
The Legion’s dead, dead, and won’t rise again.
Pity? Rome pities her brave lads that die,
But we need pity also, you and I,
Whom Gallic spear and Belgian arrow miss,
Who live to see the Legion come to this:
Unsoldierlike, slovenly, bent on loot,
Grumblers, diseased, unskilled to thrust or shoot.
O brown cheek, muscled shoulder, sturdy thigh!
Where are they now? God! watch it straggle by,
The sullen pack of ragged, ugly swine!
Is that the Legion, Gracchus? Quick, the wine!’
‘Strabo,’ said Gracchus, ‘you are strange to-night.
The Legion is the Legion, it’s all right.
If these new men are slovenly, in your thinking,
Hell take it! you’ll not better them by drinking.
They all try, Strabo; trust their hearts and hands.
The Legion is the Legion while Rome stands,
And these same men before the autumn’s fall
Shall bang old Vercingetorix out of Gaul.’
TO LUCASTA ON GOING TO THE WARS – FOR THE FOURTH TIME
It doesn’t matter what’s the cause,
What wrong they say we’re righting,
A curse for treaties, bonds and laws,
When we’re to do the fighting!
And since we lads are proud and true,
What else remains to do?
Lucasta, when to France your man
Returns his fourth time, hating war,
Yet laughs as calmly as he can
And flings an oath, but says no more,
That is not courage, that’s not fear –
Lucasta he’s a Fusilier,
And his pride sends him here.
Let statesmen bluster, bark and bray
And so decide who started
This bloody war, and who’s to pay
But he must be stout-hearted,
Must sit and stake with quiet breath,
Playing at cards with Death.
Don’t plume yourself he fights for you;
It is no courage, love, or hate
That lets us do the things we do;
It’s pride that makes the heart so great;
It is not anger, no, nor fear –
Lucasta he’s a Fusilier,
And his pride keeps him here.
TWO FUSILIERS
And have we done with War at last?
Well, we’ve been lucky devils both,
And there’s no need of pledge or oath
To bind our lovely friendship fast,
By firmer stuff
Close bound enough.
By wire and wood and stake we’re bound,
By Fricourt and by Festubert,
By whipping rain, by the sun’s glare,
By all the misery and loud sound,
By a Spring day,
By Picard clay.
Show me the two so closely bound
As we, by the wet bond of blood,
By friendship blossoming from mud,
By Death: we faced him, and we found
Beauty in Death,
In dead men, breath.
TO R.N.
(From Frise on the Somme in February 1917, in answer to a letter, saying: ‘I am just finishing my “Faun” poem: I wish you were here to feed him with cherries.’)
Here by a snow-bound river
In scrapen holes we shiver,
Boom to you plaintively.
Robert, how can I rhyme
Verses at your desire –
Sleek fauns and cherry-time,
Vague music and green trees,
Hot sun and gentle breeze,
England in June attire,
And life born young again,
For your gay goatish brute
Drunk with warm melody
Singing on beds of thyme
With red and rolling eye,
Waking with wanton lute
All the Devonian plain,
Lips dark with juicy stain,
Ears hung with bobbing fruit?
Why should I keep him time?
Why in this cold and rime
Where even to think is pain?
No, Robert, there’s no reason;
Cherries are out of season,
Ice grips at branch and root,
And singing birds are mute.
DEAD COW FARM
An ancient saga tells us how
In the beginning the First Cow
(For nothing living yet had birth
But elemental Cow on Earth)
Began to lick cold stones and mud:
Under her warm tongue flesh and blood
Blossomed, a
miracle to believe;
And so was Adam born, and Eve.
Here now is chaos once again,
Primaeval mud, cold stones and rain.
Here flesh decays and blood drips red
And the Cow’s dead, the old Cow’s dead.
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.
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.