The Penguin Book of English Verse

by Paul Keegan

  A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,

  May creep back, silent, to village wells,

  Up half-known roads.

  (1920)

  WILFRED OWEN Maundy Thursday

  Between the brown hands of a server-lad

  The silver cross was offered to be kissed.

  The men came up, lugubrious, but not sad,

  And knelt reluctantly, half-prejudiced.

  (And kissing, kissed the emblem of a creed.)

  Then mourning women knelt; meek mouths they had,

  (And kissed the Body of the Christ indeed.)

  Young children came, with eager lips and glad.

  (These kissed a silver doll, immensely bright.)

  Then I, too, knelt before that acolyte.

  Above the crucifix I bent my head:

  The Christ was thin, and cold, and very dead:

  And yet I bowed, yea, kissed – my lips did cling.

  (I kissed the warm live hand that held the thing.)

  (1963)

  SIEGFRIED SASSOON Base Details

  If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,

  I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base,

  And speed glum heroes up the line to death.

  You’d see me with my puffy petulant face,

  Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,

  Reading the Roll of Honour. ‘Poor young chap,’

  I’d say – ‘I used to know his father well;

  Yes, we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap.’

  And when the war is done and youth stone dead,

  I’d toddle safely home and die – in bed.

  SIEGFRIED SASSOON The General

  ‘Good-morning; good-morning!’ the General said

  When we met him last week on our way to the line.

  Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,

  And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.

  ‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack

  As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

  …..

  But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

  1919SIEGFRIED SASSOON Everyone Sang

  Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

  And I was filled with such delight

  As prisoned birds must find in freedom,

  Winging wildly across the white

  Orchards and dark-green fields; on – on – and out of sight.

  Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;

  And beauty came like the setting sun:

  My heart was shaken with tears; and horror

  Drifted away… O, but Everyone

  Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

  IVOR GURNEY To His Love

  He’s gone, and all our plans

  Are useless indeed.

  We’ll walk no more on Cotswold

  Where the sheep feed

  Quietly and take no heed.

  His body that was so quick

  Is not as you

  Knew it, on Severn river

  Under the blue

  Driving our small boat through.

  You would not know him now…

  But still he died

  Nobly, so cover him over

  With violets of pride

  Purple from Severn side.

  Cover him, cover him soon!

  And with thick-set

  Masses of memoried flowers –

  Hide that red wet

  Thing I must somehow forget.

  IVOR GURNEY The Silent One

  Who died on the wires, and hung there, one of two –

  Who for his hours of life had chattered through

  Infinite lovely chatter of Bucks accent:

  Yet faced unbroken wires; stepped over, and went

  A noble fool, faithful to his stripes – and ended.

  But I weak, hungry, and willing only for the chance

  Of line – to fight in the line, lay down under unbroken

  Wires, and saw the flashes and kept unshaken,

  Till the politest voice – a finicking accent, said:

  ‘Do you think you might crawl through there: there’s a hole.’

  Darkness, shot at: I smiled, as politely replied –

  ‘I’m afraid not, Sir.’ There was no hole no way to be seen

  Nothing but chance of death, after tearing of clothes.

  Kept flat, and watched the darkness, hearing bullets whizzing –

  And thought of music – and swore deep heart’s deep oaths

  (Polite to God) and retreated and came on again,

  Again retreated – and a second time faced the screen.

  (1954)

  RUDYARD KIPLING from Epitaphs of the War. 1914–18

  A Servant

  We were together since the War began.

  He was my servant – and the better man.

  A Son

  My son was killed while laughing at some jest. I would I knew

  What it was, and it might serve me in a time when jests are few.

  The Coward

  I could not look on Death, which being known,

  Men led me to him, blindfold and alone.

  The Refined Man

  I was of delicate mind. I went aside for my needs,

  Disdaining the common office. I was seen from afar and killed…

  How is this matter for mirth? Let each man be judged by his deeds.

  I have paid my price to live with myself on the terms that I willed.

  Common Form

  If any question why we died

  Tell them, because our fathers lied.

  RUDYARD KIPLING Gethsemane

  1914–18

  The Garden called Gethsemane

  In Picardy it was,

  And there the people came to see

  The English soldiers pass.

  We used to pass – we used to pass

  Or halt, as it might be,

  And ship our masks in case of gas

  Beyond Gethsemane.

  The Garden called Gethsemane,

  It held a pretty lass,

  But all the time she talked to me

  I prayed my cup might pass.

  The officer sat on the chair,

  The men lay on the grass,

  And all the time we halted there

  I prayed my cup might pass.

  It didn’t pass – it didn’t pass –

  It didn’t pass from me.

  I drank it when we met the gas

  Beyond Gethsemane!

  LAURENCE BINYON For the Fallen (September 1914)

  With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,

  England mourns for her dead across the sea.

  Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,

  Fallen in the cause of the free.

  Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal

  Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.

  There is music in the midst of desolation

  And a glory that shines upon our tears.

  They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

  Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

  They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

  They fell with their faces to the foe.

  They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

  Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

  At the going down of the sun and in the morning

  We will remember them.

  They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;

  They sit no more at familiar tables of home;

  They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;

  They sleep beyond England’s foam.

  But where our desires are and our hopes profound,

  Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

  To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

  As t
he stars are known to the Night;

  As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,

  Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,

  As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

  To the end, to the end, they remain.

  (1914)

  W. B. YEATS The Wild Swans at Coole

  The trees are in their autumn beauty,

  The woodland paths are dry,

  Under the October twilight the water

  Mirrors a still sky;

  Upon the brimming water among the stones

  Are nine-and-fifty swans.

  The nineteenth autumn has come upon me

  Since I first made my count;

  I saw, before I had well finished,

  All suddenly mount

  And scatter wheeling in great broken rings

  Upon their clamorous wings.

  I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,

  And now my heart is sore.

  All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,

  The first time on this shore,

  The bell-beat of their wings above my head,

  Trod with a lighter tread.

  Unwearied still, lover by lover,

  They paddle in the cold

  Companionable streams or climb the air;

  Their hearts have not grown old;

  Passion or conquest, wander where they will,

  Attend upon them still.

  But now they drift on the still water,

  Mysterious, beautiful;

  Among what rushes will they build,

  By what lake’s edge or pool

  Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day

  To find they have flown away?

  T. S. ELIOT Sweeney Among the Nightingales

  Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees

  Letting his arms hang down to laugh,

  The zebra stripes along his jaw

  Swelling to maculate giraffe.

  The circles of the stormy moon

  Slide westward toward the River Plate,

  Death and the Raven drift above

  And Sweeney guards the horned gate.

  Gloomy Orion and the Dog

  Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas;

  The person in the Spanish cape

  Tries to sit on Sweeney’s knees

  Slips and pulls the table cloth

  Overturns a coffee-cup,

  Reorganised upon the floor

  She yawns and draws a stocking up;

  The silent man in mocha brown

  Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes;

  The waiter brings in oranges

  Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;

  The silent vertebrate in brown

  Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;

  Rachel née Rabinovitch

  Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;

  She and the lady in the cape

  Are suspect, thought to be in league;

  Therefore the man with heavy eyes

  Declines the gambit, shows fatigue,

  Leaves the room and reappears

  Outside the window, leaning in,

  Branches of wistaria

  Circumscribe a golden grin;

  The host with someone indistinct

  Converses at the door apart,

  The nightingales are singing near

  The Convent of the Sacred Heart,

  And sang within the bloody wood

  When Agamemnon cried aloud

  And let their liquid siftings fall

  To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.

  EZRA POUND from Homage to Sextus Propertius

  VI

  When, when, and whenever death closes our eyelids,

  Moving naked over Acheron

  Upon the one raft, victor and conquered together,

  Marius and Jugurtha together,

  one tangle of shadows.

  Caesar plots against India,

  Tigris and Euphrates shall, from now on, flow at his bidding,

  Tibet shall be full of Roman policemen,

  The Parthians shall get used to our statuary

  and acquire a Roman religion;

  One raft on the veiled flood of Acheron,

  Marius and Jugurtha together.

  Nor at my funeral either will there be any long trail,

  bearing ancestral lares and images;

  No trumpets filled with my emptiness,

  Nor shall it be on an Attalic bed;

  The perfumed cloths shall be absent.

  A small plebeian procession.

  Enough, enough and in plenty

  There will be three books at my obsequies

  Which I take, my not unworthy gift, to Persephone.

  You will follow the bare scarified breast

  Nor will you be weary of calling my name, nor too weary

  To place the last kiss on my lips

  When the Syrian onyx is broken.

  ‘He who is now vacant dust

  Was once the slave of one passion:’

  Give that much inscription

  ‘Death why tardily come?’

  You, sometimes, will lament a lost friend,

  For it is a custom:

  This care for past men,

  Since Adonis was gored in Idalia, and the Cytharean

  Ran crying with out-spread hair,

  In vain, you call back the shade,

  In vain, Cynthia. Vain call to unanswering shadow,

  Small talk comes from small bones.

  EZRA POUND from Hugh Selwyn Mauberley 1920

  II

  The age demanded an image

  Of its accelerated grimace,

  Something for the modern stage,

  Not, at any rate, an Attic grace;

  Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries

  Of the inward gaze;

  Better mendacities

  Than the classics in paraphrase!