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 ….            

 

THE OLD SOLDIER


Lest the young soldiers be strange in heaven,
  God bids the old soldier they all adored
Come to Him and wait for them, clean, new-shriven,
  A happy doorkeeper in the House of the Lord.

Lest it abash them, the strange new splendour,
  Lest it affright them, the new robes clean;
Here's an old face, now, long-tried, and tender,
  A word and a hand-clasp as they troop in.

"My boys," he greets them: and heaven is homely,
  He their great captain in days gone o'er;
Dear is the friend's face, honest and comely,
  Waiting to welcome them by the strange door.

_Katharine Tynan_




LORD KITCHENER


Unflinching hero, watchful to foresee
  And face thy country's peril wheresoe'er,
  Directing war and peace with equal care,
Till by long duty ennobled thou wert he
Whom England call'd and bade "Set my arm free
  To obey my will and save my honour fair,"--
  What day the foe presumed on her despair
And she herself had trust in none but thee:

Among Herculean deeds the miracle
  That mass'd the labour of ten years in one
  Shall be thy monument. Thy work was done
Ere we could thank thee; and the high sea swell
Surgeth unheeding where thy proud ship fell
  By the lone Orkneys, at the set of sun.

_Robert Bridges_

_June 8, 1916_




KITCHENER


There is wild water from the north;
The headlands darken in their foam
As with a threat of challenge stubborn earth
Booms at that far wild sea-line charging home.

The night shall stand upon the shifting sea
As yesternight stood there,
And hear the cry of waters through the air,
The iron voice of headlands start and rise--
The noise of winds for mastery
That screams to hear the thunder in those cries.
But now henceforth there shall be heard
From Brough of Bursay, Marwick Head,
And shadows of the distant coast,
Another voice bestirred--
Telling of something greatly lost
Somewhere below the tidal glooms, and dead.
Beyond the uttermost
Of aught the night may hear on any seas
From tempest-known wild water's cry, and roar
Of iron shadows looming from the shore,
It shall be heard--and when the Orcades
Sleep in a hushed Atlantic's starry folds
As smoothly as, far down below the tides,
Sleep on the windless broad sea-wolds
Where this night's shipwreck hides.

By many a sea-holm where the shock
Of ocean's battle falls, and into spray
Gives up its ghosts of strife; by reef and rock
Ravaged by their eternal brute affray
With monstrous frenzies of their shore's green foe;
Where overstream and overfall and undertow
Strive, snatch away;
A wistful voice, without a sound,
Shall dwell beside Pomona, on the sea,
And speak the homeward- and the outward-bound,
And touch the helm of passing minds
And bid them steer as wistfully--
Saying: "He did great work, until the winds
And waters hereabout that night betrayed
Him to the drifting death! His work went on--
He would not be gainsaid....
Though where his bones are, no man knows, not one!"

_John Helston_




THE FALLEN SUBALTERN


The starshells float above, the bayonets glisten;
  We bear our fallen friend without a sound;
Below the waiting legions lie and listen
  To us, who march upon their burial-ground.

Wound in the flag of England, here we lay him;
  The guns will flash and thunder o'er the grave;
What other winding sheet should now array him,
  What other music should salute the brave?

As goes the Sun-god in his chariot glorious,
  When all his golden banners are unfurled,
So goes the soldier, fallen but victorious,
  And leaves behind a twilight in the world.

And those who come this way, in days hereafter,
  Will know that here a boy for England fell,
Who looked at danger with the eyes of laughter,
  And on the charge his days were ended well.

One last salute; the bayonets clash and glisten;
  With arms reversed we go without a sound:
One more has joined the men who lie and listen
  To us, who march upon their burial-ground.

_Herbert Asquith_

_1915_




THE DEBT UNPAYABLE


What have I given,
  Bold sailor on the sea,
In earth or heaven,
  That you should die for me?

What can I give,
  O soldier, leal and brave,
Long as I live,
  To pay the life you gave?

What tithe or part
  Can I return to thee,
O stricken heart,
  That thou shouldst break for me?

The wind of Death
  For you has slain life's flowers,
It withereth
  (God grant) all weeds in ours.

_F.W. Bourdillon_