so sick,
But it can find some needful job that’s crying to
be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.
Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till
further orders,
If it’s only netting strawberries or killing slugs
on borders;
And when your back stops aching and your hands
begin to harden,
You will find yourself a partner in the Glory
of the Garden.
Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon
his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your
hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!
And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away!
‘FOR ALL WE HAVE AND ARE’
For all we have and are,
For all our children’s fate,
Stand up and take the war,
The Hun is at the gate!
Our world has passed away,
In wantonness o’erthrown.
There is nothing left to-day
But steel and fire and stone!
Though all we knew depart,
The Old Commandments stand: –
‘In courage keep your heart,
In strength lift up your hand.’
Once more we hear the word
That sickened earth of old: – ‘No law except the Sword
Unsheathed and uncontrolled.’
Once more it knits mankind,
Once more the nations go
To meet and break and bind
A crazed and driven foe.
Comfort, content, delight,
The ages’ slow-bought gain,
They shrivelled in a night.
Only ourselves remain
To face the naked days
In silent fortitude,
Through perils and dismays
Renewed and re-renewed.
Though all we made depart
The old Commandments stand: –
‘In patience keep your heart,
In strength lift up your hand.’
No easy hope or lies
Shall bring us to our goal,
But iron sacrifice
Of body, will, and soul.
There is but one task for all – One life for each to give.
Who stands if Freedom fall?
Who dies if England live?
‘THE TRADE’
They bear, in place of classic names,
Letters and numbers on their skin.
They play their grisly blindfold games
In little boxes made of tin.
Sometimes they stalk the Zeppelin,
Sometimes they learn where mines are laid,
Or where the Baltic ice is thin.
That is the custom of ‘The Trade’.
Few prize-courts sit upon their claims.
They seldom tow their targets in.
They follow certain secret aims
Down under, far from strife or din.
When they are ready to begin
No flag is flown, no fuss is made
More than the shearing of a pin.
That is the custom of ‘The Trade’.
The Scout’s quadruple funnel flames
A mark from Sweden to the Swin,
The Cruiser’s thund’rous screw proclaims
Her comings out and goings in:
But only whiffs of paraffin
Or creamy rings that fizz and fade
Show where the one-eyed Death has been.
That is the custom of ‘The Trade’.
Their feats, their fortunes and their fames
Are hidden from their nearest kin;
No eager public backs or blames,
No journal prints the yarn they spin
(The Censor would not let it in!)
When they return from run or raid.
Unheard they work, unseen they win.
That is the custom of ‘The Trade’.
THE QUESTION
Brethren, how shall it fare with me
When the war is laid aside,
If it be proven that I am he
For whom a world has died?
If it be proven that all my good,
And the greater good I will make,
Were purchased me by a multitude
Who suffered for my sake?
That I was delivered by mere mankind
Vowed to one sacrifice,
And not, as I hold them, battle-blind,
But dying with opened eyes?
That they did not ask me to draw the sword
When they stood to endure their lot –
That they only looked to me for a word,
And I answered I knew them not?
If it be found, when the battle clears,
Their death has set me free,
Then how shall I live with myself through the years
Which they have bought for me?
Brethren, how must it fare with me,
Or how am I justified,
If it be proven that I am he
For whom mankind has died;
If it be proven that I am he
Who being questioned denied?
MY BOY JACK
‘Have you news of my boy Jack?’
Not this tide.
‘When d’you think that he’ll come back?’
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
‘Has any one else had word of him?’
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
‘Oh, dear, what comfort can I find!’
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind –
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.
Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!
MESOPOTAMIA
They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:
But the men who left them thriftily to die in their
own dung,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?
They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain
In sight of help denied from day to day:
But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in
their pain,
Are they too strong and wise to put away?
Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night
divide –
Never while the bars of sunset hold.
But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while
they died,
Shall they thrust for high employment as of old?
Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?
When the storm is ended shall we find
How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back
to power
By the favour and contrivance of their kind?
Even while they soothe us, while they promise large
amends,
Even while they make a show of fear,
Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with
their friends,
To confirm and re-establish each career?
Their lives cannot repay us – their death could
not undo –
The shame that they have laid upon our race.
But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance
that slew,
Shall we leave it unabated in its place?
THE DEEP-SEA CABLES
The wrecks dissolve above us; the
ir dust drops
down from afar –
Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind
white sea-snakes are.
There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts
of the deep,
Or the great grey level plains of ooze where the
shell-burred cables creep.
Here in the womb of the world – here on the tie-ribs
of earth
Words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter
and beat –
Warning, sorrow, and gain, salutation and mirth –
For a Power troubles the Still that has neither voice
nor feet.
They have wakened the timeless Things; they have
killed their father Time;
Joining hands in the gloom, a league from the last of
the sun.
Hush! Men talk to-day o’er the waste of the ultimate
slime,
And a new Word runs between: whispering, ‘Let us
be one!’
THE HOLY WAR
‘For here lay the excellent wisdom of him that built Mansoul, that the walls could never be broken down nor hurt by the most mighty adverse potentate unless the townsmen gave consent thereto.’
– BUNYAN’S Holy War
A Tinker out of Bedford,
A vagrant oft in quod,
A private under Fairfax,
A minister of God –
Two hundred years and thirty
Ere Armageddon came
His single hand portrayed it,
And Bunyan was his name!
He mapped for those who follow,
The world in which we are –
‘This famous town of Mansoul’
That takes the Holy War.
Her true and traitor people,
The gates along her wall,
From Eye Gate unto Feel Gate,
John Bunyan showed them all.
All enemy divisions,
Recruits of every class,
And highly-screened positions
For flame or poison-gas;
The craft that we call modern,
The crimes that we call new,
John Bunyan had ’em typed and filed
In Sixteen Eighty-two.
Likewise the Lords of Looseness
That hamper faith and works,
The Perseverance-Doubters,
And Present-Comfort shirks,
With brittle intellectuals
Who crack beneath a strain –
John Bunyan met that helpful set
In Charles the Second’s reign.
Emmanuel’s vanguard dying
For right and not for rights,
My Lord Apollyon lying
To the State-kept Stockholmites,
The Pope, the swithering Neutrals,
The Kaiser and his Gott –
Their rôles, their goals, their naked souls –
He knew and drew the lot.
Now he hath left his quarters,
In Bunhill Fields to lie,
The wisdom that he taught us
Is proven prophecy –
One watchword through our armies
One answer from our lands: –
‘No dealings with Diabolus
As long as Mansoul stands!’
A pedlar from a hovel,
The lowest of the low –
The father of the Novel,
Salvation’s first Defoe –
Eight blinded generations
Ere Armageddon came,
He showed us how to meet it,
And Bunyan was his name!
JOBSON’S AMEN
‘Blessèd be the English and all their ways and works.
Cursèd be the Infidels, Hereticks, and Turks!’
‘Amen,’ quo’ Jobson, ‘but where I used to lie
Was neither Candle, Bell nor Book to curse my
brethren by,
‘But a palm-tree in full bearing, bowing down,
bowing down,
To a surf that drove unsparing at the brown-
walled town –
Conches in a temple, oil-lamps in a dome –
And a low moon out of Africa said: “This way home!” ’
‘Blessèd be the English and all that they profess.
Cursèd be the Savages that prance in nakedness!’
‘Amen,’ quo’ Jobson, ‘but where I used to lie
Was neither shirt nor pantaloons to catch my
brethren by:
‘But a well-wheel slowly creaking, going round,
going round,
By a water-channel leaking over drowned, warm
ground –
Parrots very busy in the trellised pepper-vine
– And a high sun over Asia shouting: “Rise and shine!” ’
‘Blessèd be the English and everything they own.
Cursèd be the Infidels that bow to wood and stone!’
‘Amen,’ quo’ Jobson, ‘but where I used to lie
Was neither pew nor Gospelleer to save my
brethren by:
‘But a desert stretched and stricken, left and right, left
and right,
Where the piled mirages thicken under white-hot
light –
A skull beneath a sand-hill and a viper coiled inside –
And a red wind out of Libya roaring: “Run and hide!” ’
‘Blessèd be the English and all they make or do.
Cursèd be the Hereticks who doubt that this is true!’
‘Amen,’ quo’ Jobson, ‘but where I mean to die
Is neither rule nor calliper to judge the matter by:
‘But Himàlya heavenward-heading, sheer and vast,
sheer and vast,
In a million summits bedding on the last world’s past –
A certain sacred mountain where the scented cedars
climb,
And – the feet of my Belovèd hurrying back through
Time!’
THE FABULISTS
When all the world would have a matter hid,
Since Truth is seldom friend to any crowd,
Men write in fable, as old Aesop did,
Jesting at that which none will name aloud.
And this they needs must do, or it will fall
Unless they please they are not heard at all.
When desperate Folly daily laboureth
To work confusion upon all we have,
When diligent Sloth demandeth Freedom’s death,
And banded Fear commandeth Honour’s grave –
Even in that certain hour before the fall,
Unless men please they are not heard at all.
Needs must all please, yet some not all for need,
Needs must all toil, yet some not all for gain,
But that men taking pleasure may take heed,
Whom present toil shall snatch from later pain.
Thus some have toiled, but their reward was small
Since, though they pleased, they were not heard at all.
This was the lock that lay upon our lips,
This was the yoke that we have undergone,
Denying us all pleasant fellowships
As in our time and generation.
Our pleasures unpursued age past recall,
And for our pains – we are not heard at all.
What man hears aught except the groaning guns?
What man heeds aught save what each instant brings?
When each man’s life all imaged life outruns,
What man shall pleasure in imaginings?
So it hath fallen, as it was bound to fall,
We are not, nor we were not, heard at all.
JUSTICE
Across a world where all men grieve
And grieving strive the more,
The great days range like tides and leave
Our dead on every shore.
Heavy
the load we undergo,
And our own hands prepare,
If we have parley with the foe,
The load our sons must bear.
Before we loose the word
That bids new worlds to birth,
Needs must we loosen first the sword
Of justice upon earth;
Or else all else is vain
Since life on earth began,
And the spent world sinks back again
Hopeless of God and Man.
A People and their King
Through ancient sin grown strong,
Because they feared no reckoning
Would set no bound to wrong;
But now their hour is past,
And we who bore it find
Evil Incarnate held at last
To answer to mankind.
For agony and spoil
Of nations beat to dust,
For poisoned air and tortured soil
And cold, commanded lust,
And every secret woe
The shuddering waters saw –
Willed and fulfilled by high and low –
Let them relearn the Law:
That when the dooms are read,
Not high nor low shall say: –
‘My haughty or my humble head
Has saved me in this day.’
That, till the end of time,
Their remnant shall recall
Their fathers’ old, confederate crime
Availed them not at all:
That neither schools nor priests,
Nor Kings may build again
A people with the heart of beasts
Made wise concerning men.
Whereby our dead shall sleep
In honour, unbetrayed,
And we in faith and honour keep
That peace for which they paid.
THE HYAENAS
After the burial-parties leave
And the baffled kites have fled;
The wise hyaenas come out at eve
To take account of our dead.
How he died and why he died
Kipling: Poems Page 11
