502 War poems

Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way To the siding-shed, And lined the train with faces grimly gay. Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray As men's are, dead. Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp Stood staring hard, Sorry to miss them from the upland camp. Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp Winked to the guard. So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went. They were not ours: We never heard to which front these were sent. Nor there if they yet mock what women meant Who gave them flowers. Shall they return to beatings of great bells In wild trainloads? A few, a few, too few for drums and yells, May creep back, silent, to still village wells Up half-known roads.

This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight; The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves; The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves, And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows. Under a tree in the park, Two little boys, lying flat on their faces, Were carefully gathering red berries To put in a pasteboard box. Some day there will be no war, Then I shall take out this afternoon And turn it in my fingers, And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate, And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves. To-day I can only gather it And put it into my lunch-box, For I have time for nothing But the endeavour to balance myself Upon a broken world.

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

LOQUITUR:En Betrans de Born. Dante Alighieri put this man in hell for that he was a stirrer-up of strife. Eccovi! Judge ye! Have I dug him up again? The scene is his castle, Altaforte. “Papiols” is his jongleur. “The Leopard,” the device of Richard (Cœur de Lion). I Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace. You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let’s to music! I have no life save when the swords clash. But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson, Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing. II In hot summer have I great rejoicing When the tempests kill the earth’s foul peace, And the light’nings from black heav’n flash crimson, And the fierce thunders roar me their music And the winds shriek through the clouds mad, opposing, And through all the riven skies God’s swords clash. III Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash! And the shrill neighs of destriers in battle rejoicing, Spiked breast to spiked breast opposing! Better one hour’s stour than a year’s peace With fat boards, bawds, wine and frail music! Bah! there’s no wine like the blood’s crimson! IV And I love to see the sun rise blood-crimson. And I watch his spears through the dark clash And it fills all my heart with rejoicing And prys wide my mouth with fast music When I see him so scorn and defy peace, His lone might ’gainst all darkness opposing. V The man who fears war and squats opposing My words for stour, hath no blood of crimson But is fit only to rot in womanish peace Far from where worth’s won and the swords clash For the death of such sluts I go rejoicing; Yea, I fill all the air with my music. VI Papiols, Papiols, to the music! There’s no sound like to swords swords opposing, No cry like the battle’s rejoicing When our elbows and swords drip the crimson And our charges ’gainst “The Leopard’s” rush clash. May God damn for ever all who cry “Peace!” VII And let the music of the swords make them crimson Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash! Hell blot black for always the thought “Peace”!

for Learned and Augustus Hand You, my friends, and you strangers, all of you, Stand with me a little by the walls Or where the walls once were. The bridge was here, the city further: Now there is neither bridge nor town— A doorway where the roof is down Opens on a foot-worn stair That climbs by three steps into empty air. (What foot went there?) Nothing in this town that had a thousand steeples Lives now but these flocks of sheep Grazing the yellow grasses where the bricks lie dead beneath: Dogs drive them with their brutal teeth. Can none but sheep live where the walls go under? Is man’s day over and the sheep’s begun? And shall we sit here like the mourners on a dunghill Shrilling with melodious tongue— Disfiguring our faces with the nails of our despair? (What dust is this we sift upon our hair?) Because a world is taken from us as the camels from the man of Uz Shall we sit weeping for the world that was And curse God and so perish? Shall monuments be grass and sheep inherit them? Shall dogs rule in the rubble of the arches? Consider, Oh consider what we are! Consider what it is to be a man— He who makes his journey by the glimmer of a candle; Who discovers in his mouth, between his teeth, a word; Whose heart can bear the silence of the stars— that burden; Who comes upon his meaning in the blindness of a stone— A girl’s shoulder, perfectly harmonious! Even the talk of it would take us days together. Marvels men have made, Oh marvels!—and our breath Brief as it is: our death waiting— Marvels upon marvels! Works of state— The imagination of the shape of order! Works of beauty—the cedar door Perfectly fitted to the sill of basalt! Works of grace— The ceremony at the entering of houses, At the entering of lives: the bride among the torches in the shrill carouse! Works of soul— Pilgrimages through the desert to the sacred boulder: Through the mid night to the stroke of one! Works of grace! Works of wonder! All this have we done and more— And seen—what have we not seen?— A man beneath the sunlight in his meaning: A man, one man, a man alone. In the sinks of the earth that wanderer has gone down. The shadow of his mind is on the mountains. The word he has said is kept in the place beyond As the seed is kept and the earth ponders it. Stones—even the stones remember him: Even the leaves—his image is in them. And now because the city is a ruin in the waste of air We sit here and despair! Because the sheep graze in the dying grove Our day is over! We must end Because the talk around the table in the dusk has ended, Because the fingers of the goddesses are found Like marble pebbles in the gravelly ground And nothing answers but the jackal in the desert,— Because the cloud proposes, the wind says! Because the sheep are pastured where the staring statues lie We sit upon the sand in silence Watching the sun go and the shadows change! Listen, my friends, and you, all of you, strangers, Listen, the work of man, the work of splendor Never has been ended or will end. Even where the sheep defile the ruined stair And dogs are masters—even there One man’s finger in the dust shall trace the circle. Even among the ruins shall begin the work, Large in the level morning of the light And beautiful with cisterns where the water whitens, Rippling upon the lip of stone, and spills By cedar sluices into pools, and the young builders String their plumb lines, and the well-laid course Blanches its mortar in the sun, and all the morning Smells of wood-smoke, rope-tar, horse-sweat, pitch-pine, Men and the trampled mint leaves in the ditch. One man in the sun alone Walks between the silence and the stone: The city rises from his flesh, his bone.

(October, 1864) Shoe the steed with silver That bore him to the fray, When he heard the guns at dawning— Miles away; When he heard them calling, calling— Mount! nor stay: Quick, or all is lost; They’ve surprised and stormed the post, They push your routed host— Gallop! retrieve the day! House the horse in ermine— For the foam-flake blew White through the red October; He thundered into view; They cheered him in the looming; Horseman and horse they knew. The turn of the tide began, The rally of bugles ran, He swung his hat in the van; The electric hoof-spark flew. Wreathe the steed and lead him— For the charge he led Touched and turned the cypress Into amaranths for the head Of Philip, king of riders, Who raised them from the dead. The camp (at dawning lost) By eve recovered—forced, Rang with laughter of the host At belated Early fled. Shroud the horse in sable— For the mounds they heap! There is firing in the Valley, And yet no strife they keep; It is the parting volley, It is the pathos deep. There is glory for the brave Who lead, and nobly save, But no knowledge in the grave Where the nameless followers sleep.

Skimming lightly, wheeling still, The swallows fly low Over the field in clouded days, The forest-field of Shiloh— Over the field where April rain Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain Through the pause of night That followed the Sunday fight Around the church of Shiloh— The church so lone, the log-built one, That echoed to many a parting groan And natural prayer Of dying foemen mingled there— Foemen at morn, but friends at eve— Fame or country least their care: (What like a bullet can undeceive!) But now they lie low, While over them the swallows skim, And all is hushed at Shiloh.

From Clee to heaven the beacon burns, The shires have seen it plain, From north and south the sign returns And beacons burn again. Look left, look right, the hills are bright, The dales are light between, Because 'tis fifty years to-night That God has saved the Queen. Now, when the flame they watch not towers About the soil they trod, Lads, we'll remember friends of ours Who shared the work with God. To skies that knit their heartstrings right, To fields that bred them brave, The saviours come not home to-night: Themselves they could not save. It dawns in Asia, tombstones show And Shropshire names are read; And the Nile spills his overflow Beside the Severn's dead. We pledge in peace by farm and town The Queen they served in war, And fire the beacons up and down The land they perished for. "God save the Queen" we living sing, From height to height 'tis heard; And with the rest your voices ring, Lads of the Fifty-third. Oh, God will save her, fear you not: Be you the men you've been, Get you the sons your fathers got, And God will save the Queen.

On the idle hill of summer, Sleepy with the flow of streams, Far I hear the steady drummer Drumming like a noise in dreams. Far and near and low and louder On the roads of earth go by, Dear to friends and food for powder, Soldiers marching, all to die. East and west on fields forgotten Bleach the bones of comrades slain, Lovely lads and dead and rotten; None that go return again. Far the calling bugles hollo, High the screaming fife replies, Gay the files of scarlet follow: Woman bore me, I will rise.

What is a man? A quiet between two bombardments.