As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poets’ Corner  
 

In say 1912 in the time of the supposedly big deal Basle Socialist Conference which got reflected in more circles than just workingmen, small shopkeepers and small farmers, or 1913 for that matter when the big deal European powers were waging "proxy" war, making ominous moves, but most importantly working three shifts in the munitions plants, oh hell, even in the beginning of 1914 before the war clouds got a full head of steam that summer they all profusely professed their undying devotion to peace, to wage no war for any reason. Reasons: artists who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society, freaked out at what humankind had produced, was producing to place everybody in an inescapable box and hence their cubic fascinations from which to run, put the pieces to paint; sculptors who put twisted pieces of scrape metal juxtaposed to each other  to get that same effect, an effect which would be replicated on all those foreboding trenched fronts; writers, not all of them socialists either, some were conservatives that saw empire, their particular empire, in grave danger once the blood started flowing  who saw the v   of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy; writers of not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and for the sweet nothing maidens to spent their waking hours strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they with all their creative brethren would go to the hells, literary Dante's rings, before touching the hair of another human, that come the war drums they all would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist, world and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels.

And then the war drums intensified and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, they who could not resist the call, could not resist those maidens now busy all day strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets for their soldier boys, those poets, artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went sheepishly to the trenches with the rest of the flower of European youth to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for ….            

 

MARE LIBERUM


You dare to say with perjured lips,
  "We fight to make the ocean free"?
_You_, whose black trail of butchered ships
  Bestrews the bed of every sea
  Where German submarines have wrought
  Their horrors! Have you never thought,--
What you call freedom, men call piracy!

Unnumbered ghosts that haunt the wave
  Where you have murdered, cry you down;
And seamen whom you would not save,
  Weave now in weed-grown depths a crown
  Of shame for your imperious head,--
  A dark memorial of the dead,--
Women and children whom you left to drown.

Nay, not till thieves are set to guard
  The gold, and corsairs called to keep
O'er peaceful commerce watch and ward,
  And wolves to herd the helpless sheep,
  Shall men and women look to thee--
  Thou ruthless Old Man of the Sea--
To safeguard law and freedom on the deep!

In nobler breeds we put our trust:
  The nations in whose sacred lore
The "Ought" stands out above the "Must,"
  And Honor rules in peace and war.
  With these we hold in soul and heart,
  With these we choose our lot and part,
Till Liberty is safe on sea and shore.

_Henry van Dyke_

_February 11, 1917_




THE DAWN PATROL


Sometimes I fly at dawn above the sea,
Where, underneath, the restless waters flow--
  Silver, and cold, and slow,
Dim in the east there burns a new-born sun,
Whose rosy gleams along the ripples run,
  Save where the mist droops low,
Hiding the level loneliness from me.

And now appears beneath the milk-white haze
A little fleet of anchored ships, which lie
  In clustered company,
And seem as they are yet fast bound by sleep,
Although the day has long begun to peep,
  With red-inflamèd eye,
Along the still, deserted ocean ways.

The fresh, cold wind of dawn blows on my face
As in the sun's raw heart I swiftly fly,
  And watch the seas glide by.
Scarce human seem I, moving through the skies,
And far removed from warlike enterprise--
  Like some great gull on high
Whose white and gleaming wings beat on through space.

Then do I feel with God quite, quite alone,
High in the virgin morn, so white and still,
  And free from human ill:
My prayers transcend my feeble earth-bound plaints--
As though I sang among the happy Saints
  With many a holy thrill--
As though the glowing sun were God's bright Throne.

My flight is done. I cross the line of foam
That breaks around a town of grey and red,
  Whose streets and squares lie dead
Beneath the silent dawn--then am I proud
That England's peace to guard I am allowed;
  Then bow my humble head,
In thanks to Him Who brings me safely home.

_Paul Bewsher_




DESTROYERS OFF JUTLAND


["If lost hounds could speak when they cast up next day after an
unchecked night among the wild life of the dark they would talk much as
our destroyers do."--_Rudyard Kipling_.]

They had hot scent across the spumy sea,
  _Gehenna_ and her sister, swift _Shaitan_,
  That in the pack, with _Goblin_, _Eblis_ ran
And many a couple more, full cry, foot-free;
The dog-fox and his brood were fain to flee,
  But bare of fang and dangerous to the van
  That pressed them close. So when the kill began
Some hounds were lamed and some died splendidly.

But from the dusk along the Skagerack,
  Until dawn loomed upon the Reef of Horn
    And the last fox had slunk back to his earth,
They kept the great traditions of the pack,
  Staunch-hearted through the hunt, as they were born,
    These hounds that England suckled at the birth.

_Reginald McIntosh Cleveland_




BRITISH MERCHANT SERVICE


Oh, down by Millwall Basin as I went the other day,
I met a skipper that I knew, and to him I did say:
"Now what's the cargo, Captain, that brings you up this way?"

"Oh, I've been up and down (said he) and round about also....
From Sydney to the Skagerack, and Kiel to Callao....
With a leaking steam-pipe all the way to Californ-i-o....

"With pots and pans and ivory fans and every kind of thing,
Rails and nails and cotton bales, and sewer pipes and string....
But now I'm through with cargoes, and I'm here to serve the King!

"And if it's sweeping mines (to which my fancy somewhat leans)
Or hanging out with booby-traps for the skulking submarines,
I'm here to do my blooming best and give the beggars beans!

"A rough job and a tough job is the best job for me,
And what or where I don't much care, I'll take what it may be,
For a tight place is the right place when it's foul weather at sea!"

       *       *       *       *       *

There's not a port he doesn't know from Melbourne to New York;
He's as hard as a lump of harness beef, and as salt as pickled pork....
And he'll stand by a wreck in a murdering gale and count it part of his
work!

He's the terror of the fo'c's'le when he heals its various ills
With turpentine and mustard leaves, and poultices and pills....
But he knows the sea like the palm of his hand, as a shepherd knows the
hills.

He'll spin you yarns from dawn to dark--and half of 'em are true!
He swears in a score of languages, and maybe talks in two!
And ... he'll lower a boat in a hurricane to save a drowning crew.

A rough job or a tough job--he's handled two or three--
And what or where he won't much care, nor ask what the risk may be....
For a tight place is the right place when it's wild weather at sea!

_C. Fox Smith_




TO A SOLDIER IN HOSPITAL


Courage came to you with your boyhood's grace
    Of ardent life and limb.
Each day new dangers steeled you to the test,
    To ride, to climb, to swim.
Your hot blood taught you carelessness of death
        With every breath.

So when you went to play another game
    You could not but be brave:
An Empire's team, a rougher football field,
    The end--perhaps your grave.
What matter? On the winning of a goal
        You staked your soul.

Yes, you wore courage as you wore your youth
    With carelessness and joy.
But in what Spartan school of discipline
    Did you get patience, boy?
How did you learn to bear this long-drawn pain
        And not complain?

Restless with throbbing hopes, with thwarted aims,
    Impulsive as a colt,
How do you lie here month by weary month
    Helpless, and not revolt?
What joy can these monotonous days afford
        Here in a ward?

Yet you are merry as the birds in spring,
    Or feign the gaiety,
Lest those who dress and tend your wound each day
    Should guess the agony.
Lest they should suffer--this the only fear
        You let draw near.

Greybeard philosophy has sought in books
    And argument this truth,
That man is greater than his pain, but you
    Have learnt it in your youth.
You know the wisdom taught by Calvary
        At twenty-three.

Death would have found you brave, but braver still
    You face each lagging day,
A merry Stoic, patient, chivalrous,
    Divinely kind and gay.
You bear your knowledge lightly, graduate
        Of unkind Fate.

Careless philosopher, the first to laugh,
    The latest to complain.
Unmindful that you teach, you taught me this
    In your long fight with pain:
Since God made man so good--here stands my creed--
        God's good indeed.

_Winifred M. Letts_