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Poetry

Poetry Terminology: iambic tetrameter; iambic trimeter; etc.

(Search on "scansion")

WH Auden

  • A Small Anthology of Poems - http://www.wmich.edu/english/tchg/lit/pms/index.html
  • Auden - http://audensociety.org/poems.html
  • Auden - http://redfrog.norconnect.no/~poems/poets/w_h_auden.html
  • Poets Index - http://redfrog.norconnect.no/~poems/poets/index.html

  • "Twelve Songs" - WH Auden

  • "Refugee Blues" - WH Auden

  • "Musee des Beaux Arts" - WH Auden

  • "The Unknown Citizen" - WH Auden

  • "It's no use raising a shout." - WH Auden
    • http://www.csd.net/~connect2/quotes2.html
    • http://www.angelfire.com/bc/dreamland/poems.html 

    • It's no use raising a shout.
No, Honey, you can cut that right out.
I don't want any more hugs;
Make me some fresh tea, fetch me some rugs.
Here am I, here are you:
But what does it mean? What are we going to do?

It wasn't always like this? 
Perhaps it wasn't, but it is. 
Put the car away; when life fails, 
What's the good of going to Wales? 
Here am I, here are you; 
But what does it mean? What are we going to do? 

A long time ago I told my mother
I was leaving home to find another:
I never answered her letter
But I never found a better.
Here am I, here are you:
But what does it mean? What are we going to do?

In my spine there was a base;
And I knew the general's face:
But they've severed all the wires,
And I can't tell what the general desires.
Here am I, here are you:
But what does it mean? What are we going to do?

In my veins there is a wish,
And a memory of fish:
When I lie crying on the floor,
It says, "You've often done this before."
Here am I, here are you:
But what does it mean? What are we going to do?

A bird used to visit this shore:
It isn't going to come any more.
I've come a very long way to prove
No land, no water, and no love.
Here am I, here are you:
But what does it mean? What are we going to do?

  • "We Too Had Known Golden Hours" - WH Auden

  • "The Average" - WH Auden 
    His peasant parents killed themselves with toil
To let their darling leave a stingy soil
For any of those smart professions which
Encourage shallow breathing, and grow rich.

The pressure of their fond ambition made
Their shy and country-loving child afraid
No sensible career was good enough,
Only a hero could deserve such love.

So here he was without maps or supplies,
A hundred miles from any decent town;
The desert glares into his blood-shot eyes;

The silence roared displeasure: looking down,
He saw the shadow of an Average Man
Attempting the exceptional, and ran.

  • "September 1, 1939" - WH Auden (From Another Time by W. H. Auden) 
    I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright 
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can 
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return. 

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire 
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

James Shirley (1596-1666)

  • James Shirley (1596-1666) - Death the Leveller
    (excerpt from "The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses") http://sailor.gutenberg.org/etext98/pgbev10.txt 

    THE glories of our blood and state
  Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against Fate;
  Death lays his icy hand on kings:
        Sceptre and Crown
        Must tumble down,
  And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

Some men with swords may reap the field,
  And plant fresh laurels where they kill:
But their strong nerves at last must yield;
  They tame but one another still:
        Early or late
        They stoop to fate,
And must give up their murmuring breath
When they, pale captives, creep to death.

The garlands wither on your brow,
  Then boast no more your mighty deeds!
Upon Death's purple altar now
  See where the victor-victim bleeds.
        Your heads must come
        To the cold tomb:
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in their dust.

Jonathon Swift (1667-1745)

  • Jonathon Swift (1667-1745) - A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General
    http://www.library.utoronto.ca/www/utel/RP/poems/swift1b.html 
    "His Grace! impossible! what, dead!
Of old age too, and in his bed!
And could that mighty warrior fall,
And so inglorious, after all?
Well, since he's gone, no matter how,
The last loud trump must wake him now;
And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger,
He'd wish to sleep a little longer.
And could he be indeed so old
As by the newspapers we're told?
Threescore, I think, is pretty high;
'Twas time in conscience he should die!
This world he cumber'd long enough;
He burnt his candle to the snuff;
And that's the reason, some folks think,
He left behind so great a stink.
Behold his funeral appears,
Nor widows' sighs, nor orphans' tears,
Wont at such times each heart to pierce,
Attend the progress of his hearse.
But what of that? his friends may say,
He had those honours in his day.
True to his profit and his pride,
He made them weep before he died

Come hither, all ye empty things!
Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of kings!
Who float upon the tide of state;
Come hither, and behold your fate!
Let pride be taught by this rebuke,
How very mean a thing's a duke;
From all his ill-got honours flung,
Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung"

John Dowland (1563 - 1626)

Robert Graves

  • Robert Graves - "FAIRIES AND FUSILIERS", Columbia University http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/graves/ | http://www.bartleby.com/120/index.html
    • 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.
  • 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.

Siegfried Sassoon

On Passing the New Menin Gate by Siegfried Sassoon (1886 - 1967) 

Who will remember, passing through this Gate,
the unheroic dead who fed the guns ?
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, -
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones ?
    Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.
    Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;
    Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,
    The armies who endured that sullen swamp.

Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride
'Their name liveth for ever', the Gateway claims.
Was ever an immolation so belied
as these intolerably nameless names ?
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

'They' by Siegfried Sassoon (1886 - 1967) 

     The Bishop tells us: `When the boys come back 
     They will not be the same; for they'll have fought 
     In a just cause: they lead the last attack 
     On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought 
     New right to breed an honourable race,
      They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.'
      
     `We're none of us the same!' the boys reply. 
     `For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind; 
     Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die; 
     And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find 
     A chap who's served that hasn't found some change.' 
     And the Bishop said: `The ways of God are strange!'

Glory of Women by Siegfried Sassoon (1886 - 1967) 

You love us when we're heroes, home on leave, 
Or wounded in a mentionable place. 
You worship decorations; you believe 
That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace. 
You make us shells. You listen with delight, 
By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled. 
You crown our distant ardours while we fight, 
And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed. 
You can't believe that British troops 'retire' 
When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run, 
Trampling the terrible corpses--blind with blood. 
O German mother dreaming by the fire, 
While you are knitting socks to send your son 
His face is trodden deeper in the mud.

Wilfred Owen

  • Lost Poets of the Great War (electronic book) - http://www.cc.emory.edu/ENGLISH/LostPoets/
  • Trenches on the Web - http://www.worldwar1.com
  • Owen and W.B. Yeats - http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/LostPoets/Yeats.html
  • A Wilfred Owen Page by Eric Laermans - http://home.tiscalinet.be/ericlaermans/cultural/owen.html
  • Wilfred Owen (1893-Nov. 4, 1918) - SELECTED POETRY OF WILFRED OWEN http://library.utoronto.ca/www/utel/rp/authors/owen.html 
    "Move him into the sun--
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it awoke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds--
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved,--still warm,--too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
--O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?"
  • Greater Love 
    "Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the firece love they bear
Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude

Your voice sings not to soft,-
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,-
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear,
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

Heart, you were never hot
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not."
  • Apologia Pro Pemate Meo 
    "I, too saw God through mud,-
The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

Merry it was to laugh there-
When death becomes absurd and life absurder.
For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
Not to feel sickness or remorse or murder.

I, too, have dropped off fear-
Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,
And sailed by spirit surging light and clear
Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;

And witnessed exultation-
Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,
Shine and lift up with passion of oblation,
Seraphic for an hour; though they were foul.

I have made fellowships-
Untold of happy lovers in old song.
For love is not the binding of fair lips
With the soft silk of eyes that look and long.

By Joy, whoe ribbon slips,-
But wound the war's hard wire whose stakes are strong;
Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips;
Knit in the webbing of the rifle-throng.

I have perceived much beauty
In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
Heard music in the silentness of duty;
Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddist spate.

Nethertheless, except you share
With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
Whose world is but the trembling of a flare,
And heaven but as the highway for a shell,

You shall not hear their mirth:
You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mine.  These men are worth
Your tears.  You are not worth their merriment."

November 1917
  • Mental Cases 
    "Who are these?  Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain,-but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms rough their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms
Misery swelters.  Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

-These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable, and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a blook-smear; bight comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.
-Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
-Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness."

Frederick Niven

A Carol from Flanders

In Flanders on the Christmas morn
The trenched foemen lay,
the German and the Briton born,
And it was Christmas Day.

The red sun rose on fields accurst,
The gray fog fled away;
But neither cared to fire the first,
For it was Christmas Day!

They called from each to each across
The hideous disarray,
For terrible has been their loss:
"Oh, this is Christmas Day!"

Their rifles all they set aside,
One impulse to obey;
'Twas just the men on either side,
Just men -- and Christmas Day.

They dug the graves for all their dead
And over them did pray:
And Englishmen and Germans said:
"How strange a Christmas Day!"

Between the trenches then they met,
Shook hands, and e'en did play
At games on which their hearts were set
On happy Christmas Day.

Not all the emperors and kings,
Financiers and they
Who rule us could prevent these things --
For it was Christmas Day.

Oh ye who read this truthful rime
From Flanders, kneel and say:
God speed the time when every day
Shall be as Christmas Day.

Constantine P. Cavafy

A.E. Houseman

  • Refer - http://www.vanceandheather.com/houseman.html

  • "Alfred Edward Housman was born in a village in rural Shropshire, England in 1859. As a student at Oxford, he distinguished himself as a promising scholar of classics, though crises of a personal nature caused him to fail his final exams. Housman was determined to overcome this failing. When not working at the British Patent office Housman wrote scholarly articles, and published many of them to very high regard from those in academic circles. He was invited to teach at the University of London as a professor of Latin, and soon stepped up to Cambridge University, to retire to the life of a shy academic. He published only two volumes of poetry -- A Shropshire Lad in 1898 and Last Poems in 1922 -- yet these were instantly and enormously popular. However successful he was, the tone of his poems remained that of the Latin poets he admired: that life is short and often, inexplicably, comes to a bad end.
    He died in 1936. "

  • Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
  • Refer - http://www.student.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/~andreasf/gedichte-ecke/aeh_epitaph.html
  • Refer - http://www.vanceandheather.com/houseman.html
  • by A. E. Houseman 1914. (in the square at Mons 22nd August 1914) - http://www.wargames.co.uk/Poems/Houseman.html 

  • Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries 

These, in the day when heaven was falling, 
the hour when earth's foundation fled, 
followed their mercenary calling 
and took their wages and are dead. 

Their shoulders held the sky suspended; 
they stood, and earth's foundation stay; 
what God abandoned, these defended, 
and saved the sum of things for pay. 


  • Hugh McDiarmid

(Christopher Murray Grieve) (1892-1978)

ANOTHER EPITAPH ON AN ARMY OF MERCENARIES

(In reply to A. E. Housman)

It is a God-damned lie to say that these
Saved, or knew, anything worth any man's pride.
They were professional murderers and they took
Their blood money and their imperious risks and died.
In spite of all their kind some elements of worth
With  difficulty persist and and there on earth.

(1935)

THE Laws of God...

THE laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I , and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbour to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.

Al Young

Jyoti Shankar

John Betjeman (1906 - 1984)

  • Business Girls by John Betjeman
  • Refer - http://www.kategreen.org.uk/Business%20Girls.htm 

  •     From the geyser ventilators
   Autumn winds are blowing down
    On a thousand business women
    Having baths in Camden Town.

   Waste pipes chuckle into runnels,
   Steam’s escaping here and there,
 Morning trains through Camden cutting
  Shake the Crescent and the Square.

    Early nip of changeful autumn,
 Dahlias glimpsed through garden doors,
   At the back precarious bathrooms
     Jutting out from upper floors;

    And behind their frail partitions
     Business women lie and soak,
  Seeing through the draughty skylight
   Flying clouds and railway smoke.

  Rest you there, poor unbelov’d ones,
      Lap your loneliness in heat.
    All too soon the tiny breakfast,
     Trolley-bus and windy street!

  • Slough - 1937
  • "John Betjeman published his poem about Slough in 1937 in the collected works "Continual Dew". Slough was becoming increasingly industrialised and some housing conditions were very cramped. In willing the destruction of Slough, Betjeman urges the bombs to pick out the vulgar profiteers but to spare the bald young clerks. He really was very fond of his fellow human beings. Slough is much improved nowadays and he might be pleasantly surprised by a stroll there."

  • Refer - http://www-cdr.stanford.edu/intuition/Slough.html 

  • Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now, 
There isn't grass to graze a cow. 
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens, 
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans, 
Tinned minds, tinned breath. 

Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown 
For twenty years. 

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win, 
Who washes his repulsive skin 
In women's tears: 

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell. 

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad, 
They've tasted Hell. 

It's not their fault they do not know 
The birdsong from the radio, 
It's not their fault they often go 
To Maidenhead 

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars 
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead. 

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails. 

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

  • "In Westminster Abbey" - John Betjeman
    • http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/613.html
    • http://www.pmms.cam.ac.uk/~gjm11/poems/wabbey 

      Let me take this other glove off
  As the vox humana swells,
And the beauteous fields of Eden
  Bask beneath the Abbey bells.
Here, where England's statesmen lie,
Listen to a lady's cry.

Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans,
  Spare their women for Thy Sake,
And if that is not too easy
  We will pardon Thy Mistake.
But, gracious Lord, whate'er shall be,
Don't let anyone bomb me.

Keep our Empire undismembered
  Guide our Forces by Thy Hand,
Gallant blacks from far Jamaica,
  Honduras and Togoland;
Protect them Lord in all their fights,
And, even more, protect the whites.

Think of what our Nation stands for,
  Books from Boots' and country lanes,
Free speech, free passes, class distinction,
  Democracy and proper drains.
Lord, put beneath Thy special care
One-eighty-nine Cadogan Square.

Although dear Lord I am a sinner,
  I have done no major crime;
Now I'll come to Evening Service
  Whensoever I have the time.
So, Lord, reserve for me a crown,
And do not let my shares go down.

I will labour for Thy Kingdom,
  Help our lads to win the war,
Send white feathers to the cowards
  Join the Women's Army Corps,
Then wash the steps around Thy Throne
In the Eternal Safety Zone.

Now I feel a little better,
  What a treat to hear Thy Word,
Where the bones of leading statesmen
  Have so often been interr'd.
And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait
Because I have a luncheon date.

  • "Diary of a Church Mouse" - John Betjeman
    • http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/poetry/outloud/betjeman.shtml 

    • Here among long-discarded cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
Here where the Vicar never looks
I nibble through old service books.
Lean and alone I spend my days
Behind this Church of England baize.
I share my dark forgotten room
With two oil-lamps and half a broom.
The cleaner never bothers me,
So here I eat my frugal tea.
My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;
My jam is polish for the floor.
Christmas and Easter may be feasts 
For congregations and for priests,
And so may Whitsun. All the same,
They do not fill my meagre frame.
For me the only feast at all
Is Autumn's Harvest Festival,
When I can satisfy my want
With ears of corn around the font.
I climb the eagle's brazen head
To burrow through a loaf of bread.
I scramble up the pulpit stair
And gnaw the marrows hanging there.
It is enjoyable to taste
These items ere they go to waste,
But how annoying when one finds
That other mice with pagan minds
Come into church my food to share
Who have no proper business there.
Two field mice who have no desire
To be baptized, invade the choir.
A large and most unfriendly rat
Comes in to see what we are at.
He says he thinks there is no God
And yet he comes...it's rather odd.
This year he stole a sheaf of wheat
(It screened our special preacher's seat),
And prosperous mice from fields away
Come in to hear the organ play,
And under cover of its notes
Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats.
A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I
Am too papistical, and High,
Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong
To munch through Harvest Evensong,
While I, who starve the whole year through,
Must share my food with rodents who
Except at this time of the year
Not once inside the church appear.
Within the human world I know
Such goings-on could not be so,
For human beings only do
What their religion tells them to.
They read the Bible every day
And always, night and morning, pray,
And just like me, the good church mouse,
Worship each week in God's own house,
But all the same it's strange to me
How very full the church can be
With people I don't see at all
Except at Harvest Festival.

  • "Christmas" - John Betjeman

  • "On a Portrait of a Deaf Man" - John Betjeman

Lewis Carroll

Louis MacNeice (1907 -1963)

  • Louis MacNeice Fact Page - http://members.aol.com/carrickman/macneice.htm

  • Louis MacNeice - "Prayer before Birth" - http://www.artofeurope.com/macneice/mac1.htm 

  •      I am not yet born; O hear me.
     Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
          club-footed ghoul come near me.

     I am not yet born, console me.
     I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
          with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
             on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

     I am not yet born; provide me
     With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
          to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
             in the back of my mind to guide me.

     I am not yet born; forgive me
     For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
          when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
             my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
                my life when they murder by means of my
                   hands, my death when they live me.

     I am not yet born; rehearse me
     In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
          old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
             frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
                 waves call me to folly and the desert calls
                   me to doom and the beggar refuses
                      my gift and my children curse me.

     I am not yet born; O hear me,
     Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
          come near me.

     I am not yet born; O fill me
     With strength against those who would freeze my
          humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
             would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
                one face, a thing, and against all those
                   who would dissipate my entirety, would
                      blow me like thistledown hither and
                         thither or hither and thither
                            like water held in the
                               hands would spill me.

     Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
     Otherwise kill me.

A. D. Hope

Henry Lawson

  • Faces in the Street by Henry Lawson 

    HTMLized by birjt@alinga.newcastle.edu.au - Friday, November 12, 1999 

Original text from The Project Gutenberg Etext

entered/proofed by A. Light, alight@cybernetics.net
proofed by L. Bowser (bowser@mars.senecac.on.ca)

In the Days When the World was Wide and Other Verses (2 ed.)
by Henry Lawson [Australian house-painter, author and poet -- 1867-1922.]
First Edition printed February 1896,
Reprinted August 1896, October 1896, March 1898, and November 1898;
Revised Edition, January 1900;
Reprinted May 1903, February 1910, June 1912, and July 1913.

  • They lie, the men who tell us in a loud decisive tone
    That want is here a stranger, and that misery's unknown;
    For where the nearest suburb and the city proper meet
    My window-sill is level with the faces in the street —
    Drifting past, drifting past,
    To the beat of weary feet —
     While I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street.

    And cause I have to sorrow, in a land so young and fair,
    To see upon those faces stamped the marks of Want and Care;
    I look in vain for traces of the fresh and fair and sweet
    In sallow, sunken faces that are drifting through the street —
    Drifting on, drifting on,
    To the scrape of restless feet;
     I can sorrow for the owners of the faces in the street.

    In hours before the dawning dims the starlight in the sky
    The wan and weary faces first begin to trickle by,
    Increasing as the moments hurry on with morning feet,
    Till like a pallid river flow the faces in the street —
    Flowing in, flowing in,
    To the beat of hurried feet —
     Ah! I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street.

    The human river dwindles when 'tis past the hour of eight,
    Its waves go flowing faster in the fear of being late;
    But slowly drag the moments, whilst beneath the dust and heat
    The city grinds the owners of the faces in the street —
    Grinding body, grinding soul,
    Yielding scarce enough to eat —
     Oh! I sorrow for the owners of the faces in the street.

    And then the only faces till the sun is sinking down
    Are those of outside toilers and the idlers of the town,
    Save here and there a face that seems a stranger in the street,
    Tells of the city's unemployed upon his weary beat —
    Drifting round, drifting round,
    To the tread of listless feet —
     Ah! My heart aches for the owner of that sad face in the street.

    And when the hours on lagging feet have slowly dragged away,
    And sickly yellow gaslights rise to mock the going day,
    Then flowing past my window like a tide in its retreat,
    Again I see the pallid stream of faces in the street —
    Ebbing out, ebbing out,
    To the drag of tired feet,
     While my heart is aching dumbly for the faces in the street.

    And now all blurred and smirched with vice the day's sad pages end,
    For while the short `large hours' toward the longer `small hours' trend,
    With smiles that mock the wearer, and with words that half entreat,
    Delilah pleads for custom at the corner of the street —
    Sinking down, sinking down,
    Battered wreck by tempests beat —
     A dreadful, thankless trade is hers, that Woman of the Street.

    But, ah! to dreader things than these our fair young city comes,
    For in its heart are growing thick the filthy dens and slums,
    Where human forms shall rot away in sties for swine unmeet,
    And ghostly faces shall be seen unfit for any street —
    Rotting out, rotting out,
    For the lack of air and meat —
     In dens of vice and horror that are hidden from the street.

    I wonder would the apathy of wealthy men endure
    Were all their windows level with the faces of the Poor?
    Ah! Mammon's slaves, your knees shall knock, your hearts in terror beat,
    When God demands a reason for the sorrows of the street,
    The wrong things and the bad things
    And the sad things that we meet
     In the filthy lane and alley, and the cruel, heartless street.

    I left the dreadful corner where the steps are never still,
    And sought another window overlooking gorge and hill;
    But when the night came dreary with the driving rain and sleet,
    They haunted me — the shadows of those faces in the street,
    Flitting by, flitting by,
    Flitting by with noiseless feet,
     And with cheeks but little paler than the real ones in the street.

    Once I cried: `Oh, God Almighty! if Thy might doth still endure,
    Now show me in a vision for the wrongs of Earth a cure.'
    And, lo! with shops all shuttered I beheld a city's street,
    And in the warning distance heard the tramp of many feet,
    Coming near, coming near,
    To a drum's dull distant beat,
     And soon I saw the army that was marching down the street.

    Then, like a swollen river that has broken bank and wall,
    The human flood came pouring with the red flags over all,
    And kindled eyes all blazing bright with revolution's heat,
    And flashing swords reflecting rigid faces in the street.
    Pouring on, pouring on,
    To a drum's loud threatening beat,
     And the war-hymns and the cheering of the people in the street.

    And so it must be while the world goes rolling round its course,
    The warning pen shall write in vain, the warning voice grow hoarse,
    But not until a city feels Red Revolution's feet
    Shall its sad people miss awhile the terrors of the street —
    The dreadful everlasting strife
    For scarcely clothes and meat
     In that pent track of living death — the city's cruel street.

  • The Poets of the Tomb by Henry Lawson

  • In the Days When the World was Wide and Other Verses (2 ed.) by Henry Lawson [Australian house-painter, author and poet -- 1867-1922.] : http://www.gutenberg.cyberxs.nl/etext95/file.html?file=dwwww11.txt 

    The world has had enough of bards who wish that they were dead,
'Tis time the people passed a law to knock 'em on the head,
For 'twould be lovely if their friends could grant the rest they crave --
Those bards of `tears' and `vanished hopes', those poets of the grave.
They say that life's an awful thing, and full of care and gloom,
They talk of peace and restfulness connected with the tomb.

They say that man is made of dirt, and die, of course, he must;
But, all the same, a man is made of pretty solid dust.
There is a thing that they forget, so let it here be writ,
That some are made of common mud, and some are made of GRIT;
Some try to help the world along while others fret and fume
And wish that they were slumbering in the silence of the tomb.

'Twixt mother's arms and coffin-gear a man has work to do!
And if he does his very best he mostly worries through,
And while there is a wrong to right, and while the world goes round,
An honest man alive is worth a million underground.
And yet, as long as sheoaks sigh and wattle-blossoms bloom,
The world shall hear the drivel of the poets of the tomb.

And though the graveyard poets long to vanish from the scene,
I notice that they mostly wish their resting-place kept green.
Now, were I rotting underground, I do not think I'd care
If wombats rooted on the mound or if the cows camped there;
And should I have some feelings left when I have gone before,
I think a ton of solid stone would hurt my feelings more.

Such wormy songs of mouldy joys can give me no delight;
I'll take my chances with the world, I'd rather live and fight.
Though Fortune laughs along my track, or wears her blackest frown,
I'll try to do the world some good before I tumble down.
Let's fight for things that ought to be, and try to make 'em boom;
We cannot help mankind when we are ashes in the tomb.

  • Australian Bards and Bush Reviewers by Henry Lawson

  • In the Days When the World was Wide and Other Verses (2 ed.) by Henry Lawson [Australian house-painter, author and poet -- 1867-1922.] : http://www.gutenberg.cyberxs.nl/etext95/file.html?file=dwwww11.txt 

    While you use your best endeavour to immortalise in verse
The gambling and the drink which are your country's greatest curse,
While you glorify the bully and take the spieler's part --
You're a clever southern writer, scarce inferior to Bret Harte.

If you sing of waving grasses when the plains are dry as bricks,
And discover shining rivers where there's only mud and sticks;
If you picture `mighty forests' where the mulga spoils the view --
You're superior to Kendall, and ahead of Gordon too.

If you swear there's not a country like the land that gave you birth,
And its sons are just the noblest and most glorious chaps on earth;
If in every girl a Venus your poetic eye discerns,
You are gracefully referred to as the `young Australian Burns'.

But if you should find that bushmen -- spite of all the poets say --
Are just common brother-sinners, and you're quite as good as they --
You're a drunkard, and a liar, and a cynic, and a sneak,
Your grammar's simply awful and your intellect is weak.

Steve Turner

James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916)

Robert Louis Stevenson

As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
Through the windows of this book,
Another child, far, far away,
And in another garden, play.
But do not think you can at all,
By knocking on the window, call
That child to hear you. He intent
Is all on his play-business bent.
He does not hear, he will not look,
Nor yet be lured out of this book.
For, long ago, the truth to say,
He has grown up and gone away,
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there.

Requiem - Robert Louis Stevenson. 1850-1894

UNDER the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
  And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
  And the hunter home from the hill.

Christopher Logue

Walter de la Mare

At Ease
=======             Walter de la Mare

Most wounds can Time repair;
But some are mortal -- these:
For a broken heart there is no balm,
No cure for a heart at ease --

At ease, but cold as stone,
Though the intellect spin on,
And the feat and practiced face may show
Nought of the life that is gone;

But smiles, as by habit taught;
And sighs, as by custom led;
And the soul within is safe from damnation,
Since it is dead.

Roger McGough

Charles GD Roberts

      Bat, Bat, Come Under my Hat

      Twelve good friends
      Passed under her hat,
      And devil a one of them
      Knew where he was at.

      Had they but known,
      Then had they known all things, --
      The littleness of great things,
      The unmeasured immensity of small things.
      They had known the Where and the Why,
      The When and the Wherefore,
      And how the Eternal
      Conceived the Eternal, and therefore
      Beginning began the Beginning;
      They had apprehended
      The ultimate virtue of sinning;
      They had caught the whisper
      That Vega vibrates to Arcturus,
      Piercing the walls
      Of heavy flesh that immure us.

      But if they had known,
      Then had there been no mystery;
      And Life had been poorer,
      And laughter unsurer,
      And the shadow of death securer,
      By lack of this brief history.

William Blake (1757-1827)

  • William Blake - Auguries of Innocence - http://stellar-one.com/poems/auguries_of_innocence__william_blake.htm
  • William Blake - Auguries of Innocence - http://ash.xanthia.com/nazgsoul.html#Poetry from ashspace | http://ash.xanthia.com/blake.html
  • William Blake - Auguries of Innocence - http://neuro.ohbi.net/english_poem/auguries_of_innocence_blake.htm
  • William Blake - Auguries of Innocence - http://www.4literature.net/William_Blake/Auguries_of_Innocence/

  • William Blake - Auguries of Innocence - http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem161.html
    • This poem was first published by Rossetti in his edition in Gilchrist's Life of William Blake, 1863. It was edited from a MS. in fair draft written by Blake probably during his stay at Felpham (1800-3), and later known as the Pickering MS., from a Mr. B. J. Pickering who bought it and published an edition of it, more accurate than Rossetti's, in 1866. 

        Auguries of Innocence

To see a World in a Grain of Sand 
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, 
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 
And Eternity in an hour. 
  
A Robin Red breast in a Cage 
Puts all Heaven in a Rage. 
A dove house fill'd with doves & Pigeons 
Shudders Hell thro' all its regions. 
A dog starv'd at his Master's Gate 
Predicts the ruin of the State. 
A Horse misus'd upon the Road 
Calls to Heaven for Human blood. 
Each outcry of the hunted Hare 
A fibre from the Brain does tear. 
A Skylark wounded in the wing, 
A Cherubim does cease to sing. 
The Game Cock clipp'd and arm'd for fight 
Does the Rising Sun affright. 
Every Wolf's & Lion's howl 
Raises from Hell a Human Soul. 
The wild deer, wand'ring here & there, 
Keeps the Human Soul from Care. 
The Lamb misus'd breeds public strife 
And yet forgives the Butcher's Knife. 
The Bat that flits at close of Eve 
Has left the Brain that won't believe. 
The Owl that calls upon the Night 
Speaks the Unbeliever's fright. 
He who shall hurt the little Wren 
Shall never be belov'd by Men. 
He who the Ox to wrath has mov'd 
Shall never be by Woman lov'd. 
The wanton Boy that kills the Fly 
Shall feel the Spider's enmity. 
He who torments the Chafer's sprite 
Weaves a Bower in endless Night. 
The Catterpillar on the Leaf 
Repeats to thee thy Mother's grief. 
Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly, 
For the Last Judgement draweth nigh. 
He who shall train the Horse to War 
Shall never pass the Polar Bar. 
The Beggar's Dog & Widow's Cat, 
Feed them & thou wilt grow fat. 
The Gnat that sings his Summer's song 
Poison gets from Slander's tongue. 
The poison of the Snake & Newt 
Is the sweat of Envy's Foot. 
The poison of the Honey Bee 
Is the Artist's Jealousy. 
The Prince's Robes & Beggars' Rags 
Are Toadstools on the Miser's Bags. 
A truth that's told with bad intent 
Beats all the Lies you can invent. 
It is right it should be so; 
Man was made for Joy & Woe; 
And when this we rightly know 
Thro' the World we safely go. 
Joy & Woe are woven fine, 
A Clothing for the Soul divine; 
Under every grief & pine 
Runs a joy with silken twine. 
The Babe is more than swadling Bands; 
Throughout all these Human Lands 
Tools were made, & born were hands, 
Every Farmer Understands. 
Every Tear from Every Eye 
Becomes a Babe in Eternity. 
This is caught by Females bright 
And return'd to its own delight. 
The Bleat, the Bark, Bellow & Roar 
Are Waves that Beat on Heaven's Shore. 
The Babe that weeps the Rod beneath 
Writes Revenge in realms of death. 
The Beggar's Rags, fluttering in Air, 
Does to Rags the Heavens tear. 
The Soldier arm'd with Sword & Gun, 
Palsied strikes the Summer's Sun. 
The poor Man's Farthing is worth more 
Than all the Gold on Afric's Shore. 
One Mite wrung from the Labrer's hands 
Shall buy & sell the Miser's lands: 
Or, if protected from on high, 
Does that whole Nation sell & buy. 
He who mocks the Infant's Faith 
Shall be mock'd in Age & Death. 
He who shall teach the Child to Doubt 
The rotting Grave shall ne'er get out. 
He who respects the Infant's faith 
Triumph's over Hell & Death. 
The Child's Toys & the Old Man's Reasons 
Are the Fruits of the Two seasons. 
The Questioner, who sits so sly, 
Shall never know how to Reply. 
He who replies to words of Doubt 
Doth put the Light of Knowledge out. 
The Strongest Poison ever known 
Came from Caesar's Laurel Crown. 
Nought can deform the Human Race 
Like the Armour's iron brace. 
When Gold & Gems adorn the Plow 
To peaceful Arts shall Envy Bow. 
A Riddle or the Cricket's Cry 
Is to Doubt a fit Reply. 
The Emmet's Inch & Eagle's Mile 
Make Lame Philosophy to smile. 
He who Doubts from what he sees 
Will ne'er believe, do what you Please. 
If the Sun & Moon should doubt 
They'd immediately Go out. 
To be in a Passion you Good may do, 
But no Good if a Passion is in you. 
The Whore & Gambler, by the State 
Licenc'd, build that Nation's Fate. 
The Harlot's cry from Street to Street 
Shall weave Old England's winding Sheet. 
The Winner's Shout, the Loser's Curse, 
Dance before dead England's Hearse. 
Every Night & every Morn 
Some to Misery are Born. 
Every Morn & every Night 
Some are Born to sweet Delight. 
Some ar Born to sweet Delight, 
Some are born to Endless Night. 
We are led to Believe a Lie 
When we see not Thro' the Eye 
Which was Born in a Night to Perish in a Night 
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light. 
God Appears & God is Light 
To those poor Souls who dwell in the Night, 
But does a Human Form Display 
To those who Dwell in Realms of day.

    Be wary - a cut down version of "Auguries of Innocence" found on quite a few websites? 

          Auguries of Innocence


       To see a world in a grain of sand
        And a heaven in a wild flower,
     Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
          And eternity in an hour. 

         A robin redbreast in a cage
          Puts all Heaven in a rage.
   A dove house fill'd with doves and pigeons
       Shudders Hell thro' all its regions.
       A dog starv'd at his master's gate
        Predicts the ruin of the state.
        A horse misus'd upon the road
      Calls to Heaven for human blood.
        Each outcry of the hunted hare
       A fibre from the brain does tear.
       A skylark wounded in the wing,
       A Cherubim does cease to sing.
   The game cock clipp'd and arm'd for fight
         Does the rising Sun affright.
         Every wolf's and lion's howl
       Raises from Hell a human soul. 

       He who respects the infant's faith
        Triumphs over Hell and Death.
   The child's toys and the old man's reasons
       Are the fruits of the two seasons.
       The questioner, who sits so sly,
       Shall never know how to reply.
      He who replies to words of doubt
     Doth put the light of Knowledge out.
       The strongest poison ever known
      Came from Caesar's laurel crown,
      Nought can deform the human race
       Like to the armour's iron brace.
     When gold and gems adorn the plow
       To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.
         A riddle or the cricket's cry
           Is to doubt a fit reply.
       The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
       Make lame Philosophy to smile.
      He who doubts from what he sees
     Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
      If the Sun and Moon should doubt,
         They'd immediately go out.
     To be in a passion you good may do,
      But no good if a passion is in you.
     The whore and gambler, by the state
       Licens'd, build that nation's fate.
     The harlot's cry from street to street,
    Shall weave Old England's winding sheet.
     The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
     Dance before dead England's hearse.
         Every night and every morn
          Some to misery are born.
         Every morn and every night
       Some are born to sweet delight.
       Some are born to sweet delight,
       Some are born to endless night.
         We are led to believe a lie
        When we see not thro' the eye
  Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
     When the Soul slept in beams of light.
        God appears and God is light
    To those poor souls who dwell in night,
        But does a human form display
     To those who dwell in realms of day.

augury: n.; pl. auguries [L. augurium, divination from augur, an augur]

  1. the art or practice of foretelling events by signs or omens
    She knew by augury divine. - Swift
  2. that which forebodes; that from which a prediction is drawn; and omen; portent.
    Sad auguries of winter thence she drew. - Dryden
  3. a formal ceremony conducted by an auger. 

London

I wandered through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:

How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.

But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.


London

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every black'ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot's curse
Blasts the new born Infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.


A Poison Tree 

I was angry with my friend: 
I told my wrath, my wrath did end. 
I was angry with my foe; 
I told it not, my wrath did grow. 

And I water'd it in fears, 
Night & morning with my tears; 
And I sunned it with my smiles 
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night, 
Till it bore an apple bright; 
And my foe beheld it shine, 
And he knew that it was mine, 

And into my garden stole 
When the night had veil'd the pole: 
In the morning glad I see 
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree

City of Dreadful Night (1874) by James Thomson (1834-1882)

Refer City of Dreadful Night by James Thomson webpage.

Refer Poetry of London - London and Literature in the Nineteenth Century

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)

  • An Algernon Swinburne site - http://landow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/decadence/swinburne/acsov.html

  • "Poems and ballads" by Algernon Charles Swinburne (London: Edward Moxon & Co., Dover Street. 1866.) - http://www.people.virginia.edu/~bpn2f/Swinburne/1866.html

  • Algernon Swinburne - The Garden of Proserpine - http://www.crocker.com/~lwm/proserpine.html 
      The Garden of Proserpine

Here, where the world is quiet;
  Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
  In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing
For harvest-time and mowing,
  A sleepy world of streams.

I am tired of tears and laughter,
  And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
  For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
  And everything but sleep.

Here life has death for neighbor,
  And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labor,
  Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,
  And no such things grow here.

No growth of moor or coppice,
  No heather-flower or vine,
But bloomless buds of poppies,
  Green grapes of Proserpine,
Pale beds of blowing rushes,
Where no leaf blooms or blushes
Save this whereout she crushes
  For dead men deadly wine.

Pale, without name or number,
  In fruitless fields of corn,
They bow themselves and slumber
  All night till light is born;
And like a soul belated,
In hell and heaven unmated,
By cloud and mist abated
  Comes out of darkness morn.

Though one were strong as seven,
  He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,
  Nor weep for pains in hell;
Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes;
And well though love reposes,
  In the end it is not well.

Pale, beyond porch and portal,
  Crowned with calm leaves she stands
Who gathers all things mortal
  With cold immortal hands;
Her languid lips are sweeter
Than love's who fears to greet her,
To men that mix and meet her
  From many times and lands.

She waits for each and other,
  She waits for all men born;
Forgets the earth her mother,
  The life of fruits and corn;
And spring and seed and swallow
Take wing for her and follow
Where summer song rings hollow
  And flowers are put to scorn.

There go the loves that wither,
  The old loves with wearier wings;
And all dead years draw thither,
  And all disastrous things;
Dead dreams of days forsaken,
Blind buds that snows have shaken,
Wild leaves that winds have taken,
  Red strays of ruined springs.

We are not sure of sorrow;
  And joy was never sure;
To-day will die to-morrow;
  Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
  Weeps that no loves endure.

From too much love of living,
  From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
  Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
  Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Then star nor sun shall waken,
  Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
  Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
  In an eternal night.

  • Algernon Swinburne - A Forsaken Garden - http://www.crocker.com/~lwm/forsaken.html | 
      A Forsaken Garden

In a coign of a cliff between lowland and highland,
  At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,  
  The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses
  The steep square slope of the blossomless bed
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses
  Now lie dead.

The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken,
  To the low last edge of the long lone land.
If a step should sound or a word be spoken,
  Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand?
So long have the gray bare walks lain guestless,
  Through branches and briers if a man make way,
He shall find no life but the sea-wind's restless
  Night and day.

The dense hard passage is blind and stifled
  That crawls by a track none turn to climb
To the strait waste place that the years have rifled
  Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time.
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;
  The rocks are left when he wastes the plain;
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
  These remain.

Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not;
  As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry;
From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,
  Could she call, there were never a rose to reply.
Over the meadows that blossom and wither,
  Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song.
Only the sun and the rain come hither
  All year long.

The sun burns sear, and the rain dishevels
  One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath,
Only the wind here hovers and revels,
  In a round where life seems barren as death.
Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping,
  Haply, of lovers one never will know,
Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping
  years ago.

Heart handfast in heart as they stood, 'Look thither,'
  Did he whisper?  'Look forth from the flowers to the sea;
For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither,
  And men that love lightly may die-- but we?'
And the same wind sang, and the same waves whitened,
  And or ever the garden's last petals were shed,
In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened,
  Love was dead.

Or they loved their life through, and then went whither?
  And were one to the end-- but what end who knows?
Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither,
  As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose.
Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them?
  What love was ever as deep as a grave?
They are loveless now as the grass above them
  Or the wave.

All are at one now, roses and lovers,
  Nor known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea.
Not a breath of the time that has been hovers
  In the air now soft with a summer to be.
Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter
  Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep,
When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter
  We shall sleep.

Here death may not deal again for ever;
  Here change may not come till all change end.
From the graves they have made they shall rise up never
  Who have left nought living to ravage and rend.
Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing,
  While the sun and the rain live, these shall be;
Till a last wind's breath, upon all these blowing,
  Roll the sea.

Till the slow sea rise, and the sheer cliff crumble,
  Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,
Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble
  The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,
Here now in his triumph where all things falter,
  Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,
As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,
  Death lies dead.

Robert Herrick (1591 to 1674)

  • Eternitie By Robert Herrick (1591-1674) : http://www.aol.bartleby.com/236/14.html 

    Eternitie 

O YEARES! and Age! Farewell  
  Behold I go,  
  Where I do know  
Infinitie to dwell.  
  
And these mine eyes shall see 
  All times, how they  
  Are lost i' th' Sea  
Of vast Eternitie.  
  
Where never Moone shall sway  
  The Starres; but she,
  And Night, shall be  
Drown'd in one endlesse Day.

Hilaire Belloc

Lord Finchley

Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.
 

From "The Modern Traveller" by Hilaire Belloc

Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not

Francois Villon (15th Century French Poet)

Edwin Brock

_Five Ways to Kill a Man_             Edwin Brock

There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it. To do this
properly you require a crowd of people
wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
man to hammer the nails home.

Or you can take a length of steel,
shaped and chased in a traditional way,
and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
But for this you need white horses,
English trees, men with bows and arrows,
at least two flags, a prince, and a
castle to hold your banquet in.

Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
allows, blow gas at him. But then you need
a mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
and some round hats made of steel.

In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
miles above your victim and dispose of him by
pressing one small switch. All you then
require is an ocean to separate you, two
systems of government, a nation's scientists,
several factories, a psychopath and
land that no-one needs for several years.

These are, as I began, cumbersome ways
to kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neat
is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century, and leave him there.

Max Ehrmann (1872 - 1945)

  • Desiderata
  • (From the Alt.Usage.English FAQ: "Desiderata" was written in 1927 by Max Ehrmann (1872-1945). In 1956, the rector of St. Paul's Church in Baltimore, Maryland, used the poem in a collection of mimeographed inspirational material for his congregation. Someone who subsequently printed it asserted that it was found in Old St. Paul's Church, dated 1692. The year 1692 was the founding date of the church and has nothing to do with the poem. See Fred D. Cavinder, "Desiderata", TWA Ambassador, Aug. 1973, pp. 14-15.)
  • Refer - Undesiderata - http://www-sccm.stanford.edu/Students/aczon/undes.html

William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

(from "Echoes")

  • Refer: http://shift.merriweb.com.au/books/henley/
  • "William Ernest Henley was an English editor, writer, playwright and poet - he claimed that he "found himself in 1877 so utterly unmarketable that he had to own himself beaten in art and to addict himself to journalism for the next 10 years."

    He was first published by Leslie Stephen in the Cornhill Magazine, then in London (a magazine he started and edited 1877-81, which the 11th ed Brittanica descibed as "being of a type found more usually in Paris than London, in that it was written for its contributors than the general public") and then in the Magazine of art (ed from 1882-86). He was literary editor in The Scots Observer thereafter.

    He is chiefly remembered (if at all) for his famous poem Invictus and for a feud with Robert Louis Stevenson, his one-time greatest friend."

  • IV - I. M. R.T. Hamilton Bruce (1846-1899) [Invictus] (To R. T. H. B.)

    Out of the night that covers me, 
  Black as the Pit from pole to pole, 
I thank whatever gods may be 
  For my unconquerable soul. 
  
In the fell clutch of circumstance 
  I have not winced nor cried aloud. 
Under the bludgeonings of chance 
  My head is bloody, but unbowed. 
  
Beyond this place of wrath and tears 
  Looms but the Horror of the shade, 
And yet the menace of the years 
  Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. 
  
It matters not how strait the gate, 
  How charged with punishments the scroll, 
I am the master of my fate: 
  I am the captain of my soul.
    1875

  • XLVII - Crosses and troubles a-many have proved me.

    Crosses and troubles a-many have proved me. 
One or two women (God bless them !) have loved me. 
I have worked and dreamed, and I 've talked at will. 
Of art and drink I have had my fill. 
I 've comforted here, and I 've succoured there. 
I've faced my foes, and I've backed my friends. 
I 've blundered, and sometimes made amends. 
I have prayed for light, and I 've known despair. 
Now I look before, as I look behind, 
Come storm, come shine, whatever befall, 
With a grateful heart and a constant mind, 
For the end I know is the best of all. 
  1888-1889
  • IX - MADAM Life's a piece in bloom (To W. R.)

    MADAM Life's a piece in bloom 
  Death goes dogging everywhere: 
She 's the tenant of the room, 
  He 's the ruffian on the stair. 
You shall see her as a friend, 
  You shall bilk him once and twice; 
But he 'll trap you in the end, 
  And he 'll stick you for her price. 
With his kneebones at your chest, 
  And his knuckles in your throat, 
You would reason - plead - protest! 
  Clutching at her petticoat; 
But she's heard it all before, 
  Well she knows you've had your fun, 
Gingerly she gains the door, 
  And your little job is done. 
    1877
  • II - Life is bitter. All the faces of the years,

    Life is bitter. All the faces of the years, 
Young and old, are grey with travail and with tears. 
Must we only wake to toil, to tire, to weep? 
In the sun, among the leaves, upon the flowers, 
Slumber stills to dreamy death the heavy hours . . . 
     Let me sleep. 

Riches won but mock the old unable years; 
Fame's a pearl that hides beneath ta sea of tears; 
Love must wither, or must live alone and weep. 
In the sun, between the leaves, across the flowers, 
While we slumber, death approaches though the hours - 
     Let me sleep.
  • XXX - KATE-A-WHIMSIES, John-a-Dreams,

    KATE-A-WHIMSIES, John-a-Dreams, 
Still debating, still delay, 
And the world's a ghost that gleams - 
Wavers - vanishes away! 
We must live while live we can; 
We should love while love we may. 
Dread in women, doubt in man . 
So the Infinite runs away.
  • XXIX - To R. L. S. 

    A CHILD, 
Curious and innocent, 
Slips from his Nurse, and rejoicing 
Loses himself in the Fair. 
Thro' the jostle and din 
Wandering, he revels, 
Dreaming, desiring, possessing; 
Till, of a sudden 
Tired and afraid, he beholds 
The sordid assemblage 
Just as it is; and he runs 
With a sob to his Nurse 
(Lighting at last on him), 
And in her motherly bosom 
Cries him to sleep. 
Thus thro' the World, 
Seeing and feeling and knowing, 
Goes Man: till at last, 
Tired of experience, he turns 
To the friendly and comforting breast 
Of the old nurse, Death.

William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

(From "Hawthorn and Lavender")

  • XLV - 0, these long nights of days! 
    0, these long nights of days! 
All the year's baseness in the ways, 
All the year's wretchedness in the skies; 
While on the blind, disheartened sea 
A tramp-wind plies 
Cringingly and dejectedly! 
And rain and darkness, mist and mud, 
They cling, they close, they sneak into the blood, 
They crawl and crowd upon the brain: 
Till in a dull, dense monotone of pain 
The past is Found a kind of maze, 
At whose every coign and crook, 
Broad angle and privy nook, 
There waits a hooded Memory, 
Sad, yet with strange, bright, unreproaching eyes.
  • XLIV - He made this gracious Earth a hell 
    He made this gracious Earth a hell 
With Love and Drink. I cannot tell 
Of which he died. But Death was well. 
   
Will I die of drink ? 
Why not? 
Won't I pause and think? 
- What? 
Why in seeming wise 
Waste your breath? 
Everybody dies 
- And of death! 
   
Youth - if you find it 's youth 
Too late? 
Truth - and the back of truth? 
Straight, 
Be it love or liquor, 
What 's the odds, 
So it slide you quicker 
To the gods ?
  • XLIX - Silence, loneliness, darkness 
    Silence, loneliness, darkness - 
These, and of these my fill, 
While God in the rush of the Maytide 
Without is working His will. 
Without are the wind and the wall-flowers, 
The leaves and the nests and the rain, 
And in all of them God is making 
His beautiful purpose plain. 
But I wait in a horror of strangeness - 
A tool on His workshop floor, 
Worn to the butt, and banished 
His hand for evermore.

William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

  • Margaritae Sorori 
    A LATE lark twitters from the quiet skies:
And from the west,
Where the sun, his day's work ended,
Lingers as in content,
There falls on the old, gray city
An influence luminous and serene,
A shining peace.

The smoke ascends
In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
Shine and are changed. In the valley
Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,
Closing his benediction,
Sinks, and the darkening air
Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night--
Night with her train of stars
And her great gift of sleep.

So be my passing!
My task accomplish'd and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing,
Let me be gather'd to the quiet west,
The sundown splendid and serene,
Death.

Alice Walker

  • Thousands of Feet Below You - http://www.csd.net/~wrcucc/sermons/s_033003.html 

    Thousands of Feet Below You

Thousands of feet Below you 
There is a small Boy 
Running from Your bombs. 
If he were To show up 
At your mother's House 
On a green Sea island Off the coast 
Of Georgia 
He'd be invited in For dinner. 
Now, driven, You have shattered 
His bones. 
He lies steaming In the desert 
In fifty or sixty Or maybe one hundred 
Oily, slimy Bits. 
If you survive and return 
To your island Home 
And to your mother's Gracious Table 
Where the cup of lovingkindness 
Overflows The brim 
And From which No one 
In memory Was ever Turned) 
Gather yourself. 
Set a place For him.

W. B. Yeats (1865 -1939)

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
  And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
  And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
  And loved your beauty with love false or true;
  But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
  Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
  And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.


Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!
   A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.
     Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!
The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.


Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.


Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


ALL the words that I utter,
  And all the words that I write,
Must spread out their wings untiring,
  And never rest in their flight,
Till they come where your sad, sad heart is,
  And sing to you in the night,
Beyond where the waters are moving,
  Storm-darken'd or starry bright.


I know that I shall meet my fate 
Somewhere among the clouds above; 
Those that I fight I do not hate, 
Those that I guard I do not love; 
My country is Kiltartan Cross, 
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor, 
No likely end could bring them loss 
Or leave them happier than before. 
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, 
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, 
A lonely impulse of delight 
Drove to this tummult in the clouds; 
I balanced all, brought all to mind, 
The years to come seemed waste of breath, 
A waste of breath the years behind 
In balance with this life, this death.

Richard Lovelace (1618-1657)

  • To Althea From Prison - ("Metaphysical Lyrics & Poems of the Seventeenth Century, Donne to Butler. Selected and Edited, with an essay, by Herbert J. C. Grierson", Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1921)
  • English Civil War, 1642-1649)
  • From - http://www.biography.com
    Richard Lovelace - English Cavalier poet. He studied at Oxford, SC England, UK, and in 1642 was imprisoned for presenting to the House of Commons a petition from the royalists of Kent "for the restoring the king to his rights', and was released on bail. He spent his estate in the king's cause, assisted the French in 1646 to capture Dunkirk from the Spaniards, and was flung into jail on returning to England in 1648. In jail he revised his poems, including "To Althea, from Prison', and in 1649 published his collection of poems, Lucasta. 
    When Love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my Gates;
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the Grates:
When I lye tangled in her haire,
And fetterd to her eye;
The Gods, that wanton in the Aire,
Know no such Liberty.

When flowing Cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our carelesse heads with Roses bound,
Our hearts with Loyall Flames;
When thirsty griefe in Wine we steepe,
When Healths and draughts go free,
Fishes that tipple in the Deepe,
Know no such Libertie.

When (like committed Linnets) I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetnes, Mercy, Majesty,
And glories of my KING;
When I shall voyce aloud, how Good
He is, how Great should be;
Inlarged Winds that curle the Flood,
Know no such Liberty.

Stone Walls do not a Prison make,
Nor I'ron bars a Cage;
Mindes innocent and quiet take
That for an Hermitage;
If I have freedome in my Love,
And in my soule am free;
Angels alone that sore above,
Injoy such Liberty.

T. S. Eliot

    "There is a road under the sea paved in British bone" (T S Eliot). From " A defence of these islands" (rare).

  • The T. S. Eliot Page: http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~232/eliot.taken.html 
    "'I grow old... I grow old... I shall wear the bottoms of my 
trousers rolled.` What does that mean, Mr. Marlowe?"

"Not a bloody thing. It just sounds good."

He smiled. "That is from the 'Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
' Here's another one. 'In the room women come and go/Talking
of Michael Angelo.' Does that suggest anything to you, sir?"

Yeah -- it suggests to me that the guy didn't know very much 
about women."

"My sentiments exactly, sir. Nonetheless I admire T. S. Eliot very much."

"Did you say, 'nonetheless'?"

     - The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

Defense of the Islands

(extracted from: T. S. Eliot collected poems 1909-1962. Published by Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc. 757 Third Avenue, N.Y. 10017, Forteenth Printing, 1970)
(Also refer in the book - pages 213 to 217: "A Note on War Poetry" and "To the Indians Who Died in Africa")

Defense of the islands cannot pretend to be verse, but its
date - just after the evacuation from Dunkirk - and
occasion have for me a significance which makes me wish
to preserve it. McKnight Kauffer was then working for
the Ministry of Information. At his request I wrote these
lines to accompany an exhibition in New York of
photographs illustrating the war effort in Britain. They
were subsequently published in Britain at War (the Museum
of Modern Art, New York, 1941). I now dedicate
them to the memory of Edward McKnight Kauffer

Let these memorials of built stone - music's
enduring instrument, of many centuries of
patient cultivation of earth, of English
verse

be joined with the memory of this defense of
the islands

and the memory of those appointed to the grey
ships - battleship, merchantman, trawler -
contributing their share to the ages' pavement
of British bone on the sea floor

and of those who, in man's newest form of gamble
with death, fight the power of darkness in air
and fire

and of those who have followed their forebears
to Flanders and France, those undefeated in de-
feat, unalterable in triumph, changing nothing
of their ancestors' ways but the weapons

and those again for whom the paths of glory are
the lanes and streets of Britain:

to say, to the past and the future generations
of our kin and of our speech, that we took up
our positions, in obedience to instructions.

As referenced in some of T.S. Eliot's poetry: "Jew of Malta" by Christopher Marlowe, (1564-1593)

"Jew of Malta": Extract from ACT IV.

     Enter BARABAS<125> and ITHAMORE.  Bells within.

BARABAS. There is no music to  a Christian's knell:
How sweet the bells ring, now the nuns are dead,
That sound at other times like tinkers' pans!
I was afraid the poison had not wrought,
Or, though it wrought, it would have done no good,
For every year they swell, and yet they live:
Now all are dead, not one remains alive.

ITHAMORE.
That's brave, master:  but think you it will not be known?

BARABAS. How can it, if we two be secret?

ITHAMORE. For my part, fear you not.

BARABAS. I'd cut thy throat, if I did.

ITHAMORE. And reason too.
But here's a royal monastery hard by;
Good master, let me poison all the monks.

BARABAS. Thou shalt not need; for, now the nuns are dead,
They'll die with grief.

ITHAMORE. Do you not sorrow for your daughter's death?

BARABAS. No, but I grieve because she liv'd so long,
An Hebrew born, and would become a Christian:
Cazzo,<127> diabolo!

ITHAMORE.
Look, look, master; here come two religious caterpillars.

     Enter FRIAR JACOMO and FRIAR BARNARDINE.

BARABAS. I smelt 'em ere they came.

ITHAMORE. God-a-mercy, nose!  Come, let's begone.

FRIAR BARNARDINE. Stay, wicked Jew; repent, I say, and stay.

FRIAR JACOMO. Thou hast offended, therefore must be damn'd.

BARABAS. I fear they know we sent the poison'd broth.

ITHAMORE. And so do I, master; therefore speak 'em fair.

FRIAR BARNARDINE. Barabas, thou hast--

FRIAR JACOMO. Ay, that thou hast--

BARABAS. True, I have money; what though I have?

FRIAR BARNARDINE. Thou art a--

FRIAR JACOMO. Ay, that thou art, a--

BARABAS. What needs all this? I know I am a Jew.

FRIAR BARNARDINE. Thy daughter--

FRIAR JACOMO. Ay, thy daughter--

BARABAS. O, speak not of her! then I die with grief.

FRIAR BARNARDINE. Remember that--

FRIAR JACOMO. Ay, remember that--

BARABAS. I must needs say that I have been a great usurer.

FRIAR BARNARDINE. Thou hast committed--

BARABAS. Fornication:  but that was in another country;
And besides, the wench is dead.

The Twa Corbies by ANON

(Refer: Francis Turner Palgrame "The Golden Treasury: With a Fifth Book selected by John Press", 1964, Oxford University Press, reprinted 1982, ISBN 0 19 250900 4) 

As I was walking all alane
I heard twa corbies making a mane;
The tane unto the t'other say
'Where sall we gang and dine today?'

'--In behint yon auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new-slain Knight
And naebody kend that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair.

'His hound is to the hunting gane,
His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,
His lady's ta'en another mate,
So we may mak our dinner sweet.

'Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I'll pick out his bonny blue een:
Wi'ae lock o' his gowden hair
We'll theek our nest where it grows bare,

'Mony a one for him makes mane,
But nane sall ken where he is gane;
O'er his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair'.

Lord Ullin's Daughter by Thomas Campbell (1777-1844)

 A Chieftain, to the Highlands bound,
       Cries, "Boatman, do not tarry!
 And I'll give thee a silver pound
       To row us o'er the ferry!" --

 "Now, who be ye, would cross Lochgyle,
       This dark and stormy weather?"
 "O, I'm the chief of Ulva's isle,
       And this, Lord Ullin's daughter. --

 "And fast before her father's men
       Three days we've fled together,
 For should he find us in the glen,
       My blood would stain the heather.

 "His horsemen hard behind us ride;
       Should they our steps discover,
 Then who will cheer my bonny bride
       When they have slain her lover?" --

 Out spoke the hardy Highland wight, --
       "I'll go, my chief --I'm ready: --
It is not for your silver bright;
       But for your winsome lady:

 "And by my word! the bonny bird
       In danger shall not tarry;
 So, though the waves are raging white,
       I'll row you o'er the ferry." --

 By this the storm grew loud apace,
       The water-wraith was shrieking;
 And in the scowl of heaven each face
       Grew dark as they were speaking.

 But still as wilder blew the wind,
       And as the night grew drearer,
 Adown the glen rode armèd men,
       Their trampling sounded nearer. --

 "O haste thee, haste!" the lady cries,
       "Though tempests round us gather;
 I'll meet the raging of the skies,
       But not an angry father." --

 The boat has left a stormy land,
       A stormy sea before her, --
 When, O! too strong for human hand,
       The tempest gather'd o'er her.

 And still they row'd amidst the roar
       Of waters fast prevailing:
 Lord Ullin reach'd that fatal shore, --
       His wrath was changed to wailing.

 For, sore dismay'd through storm and shade,
       His child he did discover: --
 One lovely hand she stretch'd for aid,
       And one was round her lover.

 "Come back! come back!" he cried in grief
       "Across this stormy water:
 And I'll forgive your Highland chief,
       My daughter! -- O my daughter!"

 'Twas vain: the loud waves lash'd the shore,
       Return or aid preventing:
 The waters wild went o'er his child,
       And he was left lamenting.

Channel Firing by Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928)

Channel Firing

That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day

And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, "No;
It's gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:

"All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.

"That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them's a blessed thing,
For if it were they'd have to scour
Hell's floor for so much threatening ....

"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need)."

So down we lay again. "I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,"
Said one, "than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!"

And many a skeleton shook his head.
"Instead of preaching forty year,"
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
"I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer."

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

        -- Thomas Hardy

"AND THERE WAS A GREAT CALM" (ON THE SIGNING OF THE ARMISTICE, NOV,11, 1918) by Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928)

There had been years of Passion-scorching, cold,
       And much Despair, and anger heaving high,
       Care whitely watching.  Sorrow manifold,
       Among the young, among the weak and old,
   And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered, "Why?"

     Men had not paused to answer. Foes distraught
Pierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like blindness,
       Philosohies that sages long had thought,
     And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought
And "Hell!" and "Shell!" were yapped at Lovingkindness.

      The feeble folk at home had grown full-used
 To "dug-outs," "snipers," "Huns," from the war-adept
     In the morning heard, and a evetides perused;
    To day-dreamt men in millions, when they mused-
     To nightmare-men in millions when they slept.

       Walking to wish existence timeless, null,
     Sirius they watched above where armies fell;
   He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lull
    Of night a boom came thence wise, like the dull
    Plunge of a stone dropped into some deep well.

  So, when old hopes that earth was bettering slowly
  Were dear and damned, there sounded "War is done!"
   On morrow. Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly,
  "Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly,
     And in good sooth, as our dream used to run?"
Breathless they paused. Out there men raised their glance
   To where had stood those poplars lank and lopped,
  As they had raised it through the four years’ dance
     Of Death in the now familiar flats of France:
And murmured, "Strange, this! How ? All firing stopped?"

  Aye; all was husband. The about-to-fire fired not,
    The aimed - at moved away intrance-lipped song.
     One checkless regiment slung a clinching shot
And turning. The Spirit of Irony smirking out, "What?"
    Spoiled peradventures woven of Rage and Wrong?"

    Thenceforth no flying fires inflamed the gray,
     No hurtling shook the dewdrop from the thorn,
     No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray;
    Worn horse mused: "We are not whipped to-day";
 No weft-winged engines blurred the moon’s thin horn.

     Calm fell. From Heaven distilled a clemency;
   There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky;
     Some could, some could not, shake off misery:
     The Sinister Spirit sneered: " It had to be!"
    And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, "Why?"

On Living Too Long by Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)

IS it not better at an early hour
  In its calm cell to rest the weary head,
While birds are singing and while blooms the bower,
  Than sit the fire out and go starv’d to bed?

Stevie Smith (1903 - 1971)

(Refer: Francis Turner Palgrame "The Golden Treasury: With a Fifth Book selected by John Press", 1964, Oxford University Press, reprinted 1982, ISBN 0 19 250900 4)

Not Waving but Drowning - Stevie Smith

Nobody hear him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

Thomas Hood (1799-1845)

(Refer: Francis Turner Palgrame "The Golden Treasury: With a Fifth Book selected by John Press", 1964, Oxford University Press, reprinted 1982, ISBN 0 19 250900 4)

and

Past and Present / I Remember, I Remember - Thomas Hood

I remember, I remember
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon
Nor bought too long a day;
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away.

I remember, I remember
The roses, red and white,
The violets, and the lily-cups--
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday,--
The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember
Where I was used to swing,
And throught the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then
That is so heavy now,
And summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow.

I remember, I remember
The fir frees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from Heaven
Than when I was a boy.

The Song of the Shirt! - Thomas Hood

  • Selected Poetry of Thomas Hood (1799-1845): http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/hood3b.html

  • "Inspired by an incident which had newly drawn public attention to the condition of some workers in London. A woman with a starving infant at the breast `was charged at the Lambeth Police-court with pawning her master's goods, fo