Jumbled and short and steep –
Black in the hollows and bright where it’s breaking –
Awkward water to sweep.
5
‘Mines reported in the fairway,
Warn all traffic and detain.
Sent up Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and Golden Gain.’
Noon off the Foreland – the first ebb making
Lumpy and strong in the bight.
10
Boom after boom, and the golf-hut shaking
And the jackdaws wild with fright!
‘Mines located in the fairway,
Boats now working up the chain.
Sweepers – Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and Golden Gain.’
15
Dusk off the Foreland – the last light going
And the traffic crowding through,
And five damned trawlers with their syreens blowing
Heading the whole review!
‘Sweep completed in the fairway.
20
No more mines remain.
Sent back Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and Golden Gain.’
‘Tin Fish’
1914–18
The ships destroy us above
And ensnare us beneath.
We arise, we lie down, and we move
In the belly of Death.
5
The ships have a thousand eyes
To mark where we come …
But the mirth of a seaport dies
When our blow gets home.
‘The Trade’
(SUBMARINES)
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.
5
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.
10
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
15
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
20
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.’
25
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!)
30
When they return from run or raid.
Unheard they work, unseen they win.
That is the custom of ‘The Trade.’
‘My Boy Jack’
1914–18
‘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.
5
‘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?’
10
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,
15
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!
The Question
1916
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?
5
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
10
Vowed to one sacrifice,
And not, as I hold them, battle-blind,
But dying with open eyes?
That they did not ask me to draw the sword
When they stood to endure their lot –
15
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
20
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 –
25
If it be proven that I am he
Who, being questioned, denied?
Mesopotamia
1917
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?
5
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 –
10
Never while the bars of sunset hold.
But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,
Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?
Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?
When the storm is ended shall we find
15
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,
20
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 Holy War
1917
‘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 –
5
Two hundred years and thirty
Ere Armageddon came
His single hand portrayed it,
And Bunyan was his name!
He mapped for those who follow,
10
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,
15
From Eye Gate unto Feel Gate,
John Bunyan showed them all.
All enemy divisions,
Recruits of every class,
And highly screened positions
20
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.
25
Likewise the Lords of Looseness
That hamper faith and works,
The Perseverance-Doubters,
And Present-Comfort shirks,
With brittle intellectuals
30
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,
35
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 –
40
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 –
45
One watchword through our Armies,
One answer from our Lands: –
‘No dealings with Diabolus
As long as Mansoul stands!’
A pedlar from a hovel,
50
The lowest of the low –
The Father of the Novel,
Salvation’s first Defoe –
Eight blinded generations
Ere Armageddon came,
55
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:
5
‘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.
10
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 –
15
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
20
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!” ’
25
‘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 Himàlaya heavenward-heading, sheer and vast, sheer and vast,
30
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 keep 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.
5
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,
10
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;
15
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,
20
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.
25
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,
30
We are not, nor we were not, heard at all!
Justice
OCTOBER 1918
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.
5
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
10
That bids new worlds to birth,
Needs must we loosen first the sword
Of Justice upon earth;
Or else all else is vain