Rooks flap croaking across the lane.
I eat and swallow and eat again.
Here come raindrops helter-skelter;
I munch and nibble unregarding:
Hawthorn leaves are juicy and firm.
I’ll mind my business: I’m a good worm.
When I’m old, tired, melancholy,
I’ll build a leaf-green mausoleum
Close by, here on this lovely spray,
And die and dream the ages away.
Some say worms win resurrection,
With white wings beating flitter-flutter,
But wings or a sound sleep, why should I care?
Either way I’ll not miss my share.
Under this loop of honeysuckle,
A hungry, hairy caterpillar,
I crawl on my high and swinging seat,
And eat, eat, eat – as one ought to eat.
SORLEY’S WEATHER
When outside the icy rain
Comes leaping helter-skelter,
Shall I tie my restive brain
Snugly under shelter?
Shall I make a gentle song
Here in my firelit study,
When outside the winds blow strong
And the lanes are muddy?
With old wine and drowsy meats
Am I to fill my belly?
Shall I glutton here with Keats?
Shall I drink with Shelley?
Tobacco’s pleasant, firelight’s good:
Poetry makes both better.
Clay is wet and so is mud,
Winter rains are wetter.
Yet rest there, Shelley, on the sill,
For though the winds come frorely
I’m away to the rain-blown hill
And the ghost of Sorley.
THE COTTAGE
Here in turn succeed and rule
Carter, smith, and village fool,
Then again the place is known
As tavern, shop, and Sunday-school;
Now somehow it’s come to me
To light the fire and hold the key,
Here in Heaven to reign alone.
All the walls are white with lime,
Big blue periwinkles climb
And kiss the crumbling window-sill;
Snug inside I sit and rhyme,
Planning poem, book, or fable,
At my darling beech-wood table
Fresh with bluebells from the hill.
Through the window I can see
Rooks above the cherry-tree,
Sparrows in the violet bed,
Bramble-bush and bumble-bee,
And old red bracken smoulders still
Among boulders on the hill,
Far too bright to seem quite dead.
But old Death, who can’t forget,
Waits his time and watches yet,
Waits and watches by the door.
Look, he’s got a great new net,
And when my fighting starts afresh
Stouter cord and smaller mesh
Won’t be cheated as before.
Nor can kindliness of Spring,
Flowers that smile nor birds that sing,
Bumble-bee nor butterfly,
Nor grassy hill nor anything
Of magic keep me safe to rhyme
In this Heaven beyond my time.
No! for Death is waiting by.
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.
FAMILIAR LETTER TO SIEGFRIED SASSOON
(From Bivouacs at Mametz Wood, July 13th, 1916)
I never dreamed we’d meet that day
In our old haunts down Fricourt way,
Plotting such marvellous journeys there
For golden-houred ‘Après-la-guerre.’
Well, when it’s over, first we’ll meet
At Gweithdy Bach, my country seat
In Wales, a curious little shop
With two rooms and a roof on top,
A sort of Morlancourt-ish billet
That never needs a crowd to fill it.
But oh, the country round about!
The sort of view that makes you shout
For want of any better way
Of praising God: there’s a blue bay
Shining in front, and on the right
Snowdon and Hebog capped with white,
And lots of other mountain peaks
That you could wonder at for weeks,
With jag and spur and hump and cleft.
There’s a grey castle on the left,
And back in the high hinterland
You’ll see the grave of Shawn Knarlbrand
Who slew the savage Buffaloon
By the Nant-col one night in June,
And won his surname from the horn
Of this prodigious unicorn.
Beyond, where the two Rhinogs tower,
Rhinog Fach and Rhinog Fawr,
Close there after a four years’ chase
From Thessaly and the woods of Thrace,
The beaten Dog-cat stood at bay
And growled and fought and passed away.
You’ll see where mountain conies grapple
With prayer and creed in their rock chapel
Which three young children once built for them;
They call it Söar Bethlehem.
You’ll see where in old Roman days,
Before Revivals changed our ways,
The Virgin ’scaped the Devil’s grab,
Printing her foot on a stone slab
With five clear toe-marks; and you’ll find
The fiendish thumb-print close behind.
You’ll see where Math, Mathonwy’s son,
Spoke with the wizard Gwydion
And bade him for South Wales set out
To steal that creature with the snout,
That new-discovered grunting beast
Divinely flavoured for the feast.
No traveller yet has hit upon
A wilder land than Meirion,
For desolate hills and tumbling stones,
Bogland and melody and old bones.
Fairies and ghosts are here galore,
And poetry most splendid, more
Than can be written with the pen
Or understood by common men.
In Gweithdy Bach we’ll rest a while,
We’ll dress our wounds and learn to smile
With easier lips; we’ll stretch our legs,
And live on bilberry tart and eggs,
And store up solar energy,
Basking in sunshine by the sea,
Until we feel a match once more
For anything but another war.
So then we’ll kiss our families,
And sail away across the seas
(The God of Song protecting us)
To the great hills of Caucasus.
Robert will learn the local bat
For billeting and things like that,
If Siegfried learns the piccolo
To charm the people as we go.
The simple peasants clad in furs
Will greet the foreign officers
Wi
th open arms, and ere they pass
Will make them tuneful with Kavasse.
In old Bagdad we’ll call a halt
At the Sashuns’ ancestral vault;
We’ll catch the Persian rose-flowers’ scent,
And understand what Omar meant.
Bitlis and Mush will know our faces,
Tiflis and Tomsk, and all such places.
Perhaps eventually we’ll get
Among the Tartars of Thibet,
Hobnobbing with the Chungs and Mings,
And doing wild, tremendous things
In free adventure, quest and fight,
And God! what poetry we’ll write!
FAUN
Here down this very way,
Here only yesterday
King Faun went leaping.
He sang, with careless shout
Hurling his name about;
He sang, with oaken stock
His steps from rock to rock
In safety keeping,
‘Here Faun is free,
Here Faun is free!’
To-day against yon pine,
Forlorn yet still divine,
King Faun leant weeping.
‘They drank my holy brook,
My strawberries they took,
My private path they trod.’
Loud wept the desolate God,
Scorn on scorn heaping,
‘Faun, what is he,
Faun, what is he?’
THE SPOILSPORT
My familiar ghost again
Comes to see what he can see,
Critic, son of Conscious Brain,
Spying on our privacy.
Slam the window, bolt the door,
Yet he’ll enter in and stay;
In to-morrow’s book he’ll score
Indiscretions of to-day.
Whispered love and muttered fears,
How their echoes fly about!
None escape his watchful ears,
Every sigh might be a shout.
No kind words nor angry cries
Turn away this grim spoilsport;
No fine lady’s pleading eyes,
Neither love, nor hate, nor… port.
Critic wears no smile of fun,
Speaks no word of blame nor praise,
Counts our kisses one by one,
Notes each gesture, every phrase.
My familiar ghost again
Stands or squats where suits him best;
Critic, son of Conscious Brain,
Listens, watches, takes no rest.
THE SHIVERING BEGGAR
Near Clapham village, where fields began,
Saint Edward met a beggar man.
It was Christmas morning, the church bells tolled,
The old man trembled for the fierce cold.
Saint Edward cried, ‘It is monstrous sin
A beggar to lie in rags so thin!
An old grey-beard and the frost so keen:
I shall give him my fur-lined gaberdine.’
He stripped off his gaberdine of scarlet
And wrapped it round the aged varlet,
Who clutched at the folds with a muttered curse,
Quaking and chattering seven times worse.
Said Edward, ‘Sir, it would seem you freeze
Most bitter at your extremities.
Here are gloves and shoes and stockings also,
That warm upon your way you may go.’
The man took stocking and shoe and glove,
Blaspheming Christ our Saviour’s love,
Yet seemed to find but little relief,
Shaking and shivering like a leaf.
Said the saint again, ‘I have no great riches,
Yet take this tunic, take these breeches,
My shirt and my vest, take everything,
And give due thanks to Jesus the King.’
The saint stood naked upon the snow
Long miles from where he was lodged at Bowe,
Praying, ‘O God! my faith, it grows faint!
This would try the temper of any saint.
‘Make clean my heart, Almighty, I pray,
And drive these sinful thoughts away.
Make clean my heart if it be Thy will,
This damned old rascal’s shivering still!’
He stooped, he touched the beggar man’s shoulder;
He asked him did the frost nip colder?
‘Frost!’ said the beggar, ‘no, stupid lad!
’Tis the palsy makes me shiver so bad.’
JONAH
A purple whale
Proudly sweeps his tail
Towards Nineveh;
Glassy green
Surges between
A mile of roaring sea.
‘O town of gold,
Of splendour multifold,
Lucre and lust,
Leviathan’s eye
Can surely spy
Thy doom of death and dust.’
On curving sands
Vengeful Jonah stands.
‘Yet forty days,
Then down, down,
Tumbles the town
In flaming ruin ablaze.’
With swift lament
Those Ninevites repent.
They cry in tears,
‘Our hearts fail!
The whale, the whale!
Our sins prick us like spears.’
Jonah is vexed;
He cries, ‘What next? what next?’
And shakes his fist.
‘Stupid city,
The shame, the pity,
The glorious crash I’ve missed.’
Away goes Jonah grumbling,
Murmuring and mumbling;
Off ploughs the purple whale,
With disappointed tail.
JOHN SKELTON
What could be dafter
Than John Skelton’s laughter?
What sound more tenderly
Than his pretty poetry?
So where to rank old Skelton?
He was no monstrous Milton,
Nor wrote no Paradise Lost,
So wondered at by most,
Phrased so disdainfully,
Composed so painfully.
He struck what Milton missed,
Milling an English grist
With homely turn and twist.
He was English through and through,
Not Greek, nor French, nor Jew,
Though well their tongues he knew,
The living and the dead:
Learned Erasmus said,
Hic, unum Britannicarum
Lumen et decus literarum.
But oh, Colin Clout!
How his pen flies about,
Twiddling and turning,
Scorching and burning,
Thrusting and thrumming!
How it hurries with humming,
Leaping and running,
At the tipsy-topsy Tunning
Of Mistress Eleanor Rumming!
How for poor Philip Sparrow
Was murdered at Carow,
How our hearts he does harrow!
Jest and grief mingle
In this jangle-jingle,
For he will not stop
To sweep nor mop,
To prune nor prop,
To cut each phrase up
Like beef when we sup,
Nor sip at each line
As at brandy-wine,
Or port when we dine.
But angrily, wittily,
Tenderly, prettily,
Laughingly, learnedly,
Sadly, madly,
Helter-skelter John
Rhymes serenely on,
As English poets should.
Old John, you do me good!
I WONDER WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE DROWNED?
Look at my knees,
That island rising from the steamy seas!
The candle’s a tall lightship; my two hands
Are boats and barges ancho
red to the sands,
With mighty cliffs all round;
They’re full of wine and riches from far lands….
I wonder what it feels like to be drowned?
I can make caves,
By lifting up the island and huge waves
And storms, and then with head and ears well under
Blow bubbles with a monstrous roar like thunder,
A bull-of-Bashan sound.
The seas run high and the boats split asunder….
I wonder what it feels like to be drowned?
The thin soap slips
And slithers like a shark under the ships.
My toes are on the soap-dish – that’s the effect
Of my huge storms; an iron steamer’s wrecked.
The soap slides round and round;
He’s biting the old sailors, I expect….
I wonder what it feels like to be drowned?
DOUBLE RED DAISIES
Double red daisies, they’re my flowers,
Which nobody else may grow.
In a big quarrelsome house like ours
They try it sometimes – but no,
I root them up because they’re my flowers,
Which nobody else may grow.
Claire has a tea-rose, but she didn’t plant it;
Ben has an iris, but I don’t want it.
Daisies, double red daisies for me,
The beautifulest flowers in the garden.
Double red daisy, that’s my mark:
I paint it in all my books!
It’s carved high up on the beech-tree bark,
How neat and lovely it looks!
So don’t forget that it’s my trade mark;
Don’t copy it in your books.
Claire has a tea-rose, but she didn’t plant it;
Ben has an iris, but I don’t want it.
Daisies, double red daisies for me,
The beautifulest flowers in the garden.
I’D LOVE TO BE A FAIRY’S CHILD
Children born of fairy stock
Never need for shirt or frock,
Never want for food or fire,
Always get their heart’s desire:
Jingle pockets full of gold,
Marry when they’re seven years old.
Every fairy child may keep
Two strong ponies and ten sheep;
All have houses, each his own,
Built of brick or granite stone;
They live on cherries, they run wild –
I’d love to be a fairy’s child.
THE NEXT WAR
You young friskies who to-day
Jump and fight in Father’s hay
With bows and arrows and wooden spears,
Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers,
Happy though these hours you spend,
Have they warned you how games end?