Part 11

Only a starveling singer seeks The stuff of songs among the Greeks. Juno is old, Jove's loves are cold; Tales over-told. By a new risen Attic stream A mortal singer dreamed a dream. Fixed he not Fancy's habitation, Nor set in bonds Imagination. There are new waters, and a new Humanity. For all old myths give us the dream to be. We are outwearied with Persephone; Rather than her, we'll sing Reality.

SONG

I was so chill, and overworn, and sad, To be a lady was the only joy I had. I walked the street as silent as a mouse, Buying fine clothes, and fittings for the house.

But since I saw my love I wear a simple dress, And happily I move Forgetting weariness.

_Siegfried Sassoon_

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, the poet whom Masefield hailed as "one of England's most brilliant rising stars," was born September 8, 1886. He was educated at Marlborough and Clare College, Cambridge, and was a captain in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. He fought three times in France, once in Palestine, winning the Military Cross for bringing in wounded on the battlefield.

His poetry divides itself sharply in two moods--the lyric and the ironic. His early lilting poems were without significance or individuality. But with _The Old Huntsman_ (1917) Sassoon found his own idiom, and became one of the leading younger poets upon the appearance of this striking volume. The first poem, a long monologue evidently inspired by Masefield, gave little evidence of what was to come. Immediately following it, however, came a series of war poems, undisguised in their tragedy and bitterness. Every line of these quivering stanzas bore the mark of a sensitive and outraged nature; there was scarcely a phrase that did not protest against the "glorification" and false glamour of war.

_Counter-Attack_ appeared in 1918. In this volume Sassoon turned entirely from an ordered loveliness to the gigantic brutality of war. At heart a lyric idealist, the bloody years intensified and twisted his tenderness till what was stubborn and satiric in him forced its way to the top. In _Counter-Attack_ Sassoon found his angry outlet. Most of these poems are choked with passion; many of them are torn out, roots and all, from the very core of an intense conviction; they rush on, not so much because of the poet's art but almost in spite of it. A suave utterance, a neatly-joined structure would be out of place and even inexcusable in poems like "The Rear-Guard," "To Any Dead Officer," "Does It Matter?"--verses that are composed of love, fever and indignation.

Can Sassoon see nothing glorious or uplifting in war? His friend, Robert Nichols, another poet and soldier, speaks for him in a preface. "Let no one ever," Nichols quotes Sassoon as saying, "from henceforth say one word in any way countenancing war. It is dangerous even to speak of how here and there the individual may gain some hardship of soul by it. For war is hell, and those who institute it are criminals. Were there even anything to say for it, it should not be said; for its spiritual disasters far outweigh any of its advantages...." Nichols adds his approval to these sentences, saying, "For myself, this is the truth. War does not ennoble, it degrades."

Early in 1920 Sassoon visited America. At the same time he brought out his _Picture Show_ (1920), a vigorous answer to those who feared that Sassoon had "written himself out" or had begun to burn away in his own fire. Had Rupert Brooke lived, he might have written many of these lacerated but somehow exalted lines. Sassoon's three volumes are the most vital and unsparing records of the war we have had. They synthesize in poetry what Barbusse's _Under Fire_ spreads out in panoramic prose.

TO VICTORY

Return to greet me, colours that were my joy, Not in the woeful crimson of men slain, But shining as a garden; come with the streaming Banners of dawn and sundown after rain.

I want to fill my gaze with blue and silver, Radiance through living roses, spires of green, Rising in young-limbed copse and lovely wood, Where the hueless wind passes and cries unseen.

I am not sad; only I long for lustre,-- Tired of the greys and browns and leafless ash. I would have hours that move like a glitter of dancers, Far from the angry guns that boom and flash.

Return, musical, gay with blossom and fleetness, Days when my sight shall be clear and my heart rejoice; Come from the sea with breadth of approaching brightness, When the blithe wind laughs on the hills with uplifted voice.

DREAMERS

Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land, Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows. In the great hour of destiny they stand, Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows. Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives. Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats, And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain, Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats, And mocked by hopeless longing to regain Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats, And going to the office in the train.

THE REAR-GUARD

Groping along the tunnel, step by step, He winked his prying torch with patching glare From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.

Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know, A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed; And he, exploring fifty feet below The rosy gloom of battle overhead.

Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw someone lie Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug, And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug. "I'm looking for headquarters." No reply. "God blast your neck!" (For days he'd had no sleep.) "Get up and guide me through this stinking place." Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap, And flashed his beam across the livid face Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore Agony dying hard ten days before; And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound. Alone he staggered on until he found Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair To the dazed, muttering creatures underground Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound. At last, with sweat of horror in his hair, He climbed through darkness to the twilight air, Unloading hell behind him step by step.

THRUSHES

Tossed on the glittering air they soar and skim, Whose voices make the emptiness of light A windy palace. Quavering from the brim Of dawn, and bold with song at edge of night, They clutch their leafy pinnacles and sing Scornful of man, and from his toils aloof Whose heart's a haunted woodland whispering; Whose thoughts return on tempest-baffled wing; Who hears the cry of God in everything, And storms the gate of nothingness for proof.

AFTERMATH

_Have you forgotten yet?..._ For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days, Like traffic checked a while at the crossing of city ways: And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go, Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare. _But the past is just the same,--and War's a bloody game.... Have you forgotten yet?... Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget._

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz,-- The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets? Do you remember the rats; and the stench Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench,-- And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain? Do you ever stop and ask, "Is it all going to happen again?"

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack,-- And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men? Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back With dying eyes and lolling heads, those ashen-grey Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

_Have you forgotten yet?... Look up, and swear by the green of the Spring that you'll never forget._

_Rupert Brooke_

Possibly the most famous of the Georgians, Rupert Brooke, was born at Rugby in August, 1887, his father being assistant master at the school. As a youth, Brooke was keenly interested in all forms of athletics; playing cricket, football, tennis, and swimming as well as most professionals. He was six feet tall, his finely molded head topped with a crown of loose hair of lively brown; "a golden young Apollo," said Edward Thomas. Another friend of his wrote, "to look at, he was part of the youth of the world. He was one of the handsomest Englishmen of his time." His beauty overstressed somewhat his naturally romantic disposition; his early poems are a blend of delight in the splendor of actuality and disillusion in a loveliness that dies. The shadow of John Donne lies over his pages.

This occasional cynicism was purged, when after several years of travel (he had been to Germany, Italy and Honolulu) the war came, turning Brooke away from

"A world grown old and cold and weary ... And half men, and their dirty songs and dreary, And all the little emptiness of love."

Brooke enlisted with a relief that was like a rebirth; he sought a new energy in the struggle "where the worst friend and enemy is but Death." After seeing service in Belgium, 1914, he spent the following winter in a training-camp in Dorsetshire and sailed with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in February, 1915, to take part in the unfortunate Dardenelles Campaign.

Brooke never reached his destination. He died of blood-poison at Skyros, April 23, 1915. His early death was one of England's great literary losses; Lascelles Abercrombie, W. W. Gibson (with both of whom he had been associated on the quarterly, _New Numbers_), Walter De la Mare, the Hon. Winston Spencer Churchill, and a host of others united to pay tribute to the most brilliant and passionate of the younger poets.

Brooke's sonnet-sequence, _1914_ (from which "The Soldier" is taken), which, with prophetic irony, appeared a few weeks before his death, contains the accents of immortality. And "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" (unfortunately too long to reprint in this volume), is fully as characteristic of the lighter and more playful side of Brooke's temperament. Both these phases are combined in "The Great Lover," of which Abercrombie has written, "It is life he loves, and not in any abstract sense, but all the infinite little familiar details of life, remembered and catalogued with delightful zest."

THE GREAT LOVER[19]

I have been so great a lover: filled my days So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, Desire illimitable, and still content, And all dear names men use, to cheat despair, For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear Our hearts at random down the dark of life. Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far, My night shall be remembered for a star That outshone all the suns of all men's days. Shall I not crown them with immortal praise Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see The inenarrable godhead of delight? Love is a flame;--we have beaconed the world's night. A city:--and we have built it, these and I. An emperor:--we have taught the world to die. So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence, And the high cause of Love's magnificence, And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames, And set them as a banner, that men may know, To dare the generations, burn, and blow Out on; the wind of Time, shining and streaming.... These I have loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours, Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon; Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen Unpassioned beauty of a great machine; The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes; and other such-- The comfortable smell of friendly fingers, Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers About dead leaves and last year's ferns.... Dear names, And thousand others throng to me! Royal flames; Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring; Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing: Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain, Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train; Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home; And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould; Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew; And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new; And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;-- All these have been my loves. And these shall pass. Whatever passes not, in the great hour, Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power To hold them with me through the gate of Death. They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath, Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust And sacramented covenant to the dust. --Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake, And give what's left of love again, and make New friends, now strangers.... But the best I've known, Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown About the winds of the world, and fades from brains Of living men, and dies. Nothing remains.

O dear my loves, O faithless, once again This one last gift I give: that after men Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed Praise you, "All these were lovely"; say, "He loved."

DUST[20]

When the white flame in us is gone, And we that lost the world's delight Stiffen in darkness, left alone To crumble in our separate night;

When your swift hair is quiet in death, And through the lips corruption thrust Has stilled the labour of my breath-- When we are dust, when we are dust!--

Not dead, not undesirous yet, Still sentient, still unsatisfied, We'll ride the air, and shine and flit, Around the places where we died,

And dance as dust before the sun, And light of foot, and unconfined, Hurry from road to road, and run About the errands of the wind.

And every mote, on earth or air, Will speed and gleam, down later days, And like a secret pilgrim fare By eager and invisible ways,

Nor ever rest, nor ever lie, Till, beyond thinking, out of view, One mote of all the dust that's I Shall meet one atom that was you.

Then in some garden hushed from wind, Warm in a sunset's afterglow, The lovers in the flowers will find A sweet and strange unquiet grow

Upon the peace; and, past desiring, So high a beauty in the air, And such a light, and such a quiring, And such a radiant ecstasy there,

They'll know not if it's fire, or dew, Or out of earth, or in the height, Singing, or flame, or scent, or hue, Or two that pass, in light, to light,

Out of the garden higher, higher ... But in that instant they shall learn The shattering fury of our fire, And the weak passionless hearts will burn

And faint in that amazing glow, Until the darkness close above; And they will know--poor fools, they'll know!-- One moment, what it is to love.

THE SOLDIER[21]

If I should die, think only this of me; That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] From _The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke_. Copyright, 1915, by John Lane Company and reprinted by permission.

[20] From _The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke_. Copyright, 1915, by John Lane Company and reprinted by permission.

[21] From _The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke_. Copyright, 1915, by John Lane Company and reprinted by permission.

_Winifred M. Letts_

Winifred M. Letts was born in Ireland in 1887, and her early work concerned itself almost entirely with the humor and pathos found in her immediate surroundings. Her _Songs from Leinster_ (1913) is her most characteristic collection; a volume full of the poetry of simple people and humble souls. Although she has called herself "a back-door sort of bard," she is particularly effective in the old ballad measure and in her quaint portrayal of Irish peasants rather than of Gaelic kings and pagan heroes. She has also written three novels, five books for children, a later volume of _Poems of the War_ and, during the conflict, served as a nurse at various base hospitals.

GRANDEUR

Poor Mary Byrne is dead, An' all the world may see Where she lies upon her bed Just as fine as quality.

She lies there still and white, With candles either hand That'll guard her through the night: Sure she never was so grand.

She holds her rosary, Her hands clasped on her breast. Just as dacint as can be In the habit she's been dressed.

In life her hands were red With every sort of toil, But they're white now she is dead, An' they've sorra mark of soil.

The neighbours come and go, They kneel to say a prayer, I wish herself could know Of the way she's lyin' there.

It was work from morn till night, And hard she earned her bread: But I'm thinking she's a right To be aisy now she's dead.

When other girls were gay, At wedding or at fair, She'd be toiling all the day, Not a minyit could she spare.

An' no one missed her face, Or sought her in a crowd, But to-day they throng the place Just to see her in her shroud.

The creature in her life Drew trouble with each breath; She was just "poor Jim Byrne's wife"-- But she's lovely in her death.

I wish the dead could see The splendour of a wake, For it's proud herself would be Of the keening that they make.

Och! little Mary Byrne, You welcome every guest, Is it now you take your turn To be merry with the rest?

I'm thinking you'd be glad, Though the angels make your bed, Could you see the care we've had To respect you--now you're dead.

THE SPIRES OF OXFORD

I saw the spires of Oxford As I was passing by, The grey spires of Oxford Against the pearl-grey sky. My heart was with the Oxford men Who went abroad to die.

The years go fast in Oxford, The golden years and gay, The hoary Colleges look down On careless boys at play. But when the bugles sounded war They put their games away.

They left the peaceful river, The cricket-field, the quad, The shaven lawns of Oxford, To seek a bloody sod-- They gave their merry youth away For country and for God.

God rest you, happy gentlemen, Who laid your good lives down, Who took the khaki and the gun Instead of cap and gown. God bring you to a fairer place Than even Oxford town.

_Francis Brett Young_

Francis Brett Young, who is a novelist as well as a poet, and who has been called, by _The Manchester Guardian_, "one of the promising evangelists of contemporary poetry," has written much that is both graceful and grave. There is music and a message in his lines that seem to have as their motto: "Trust in the true and fiery spirit of Man." Best known as a writer of prose, his most prominent works are _Marching on Tanga_ and _The Crescent Moon_.

Brett Young's _Five Degrees South_ (1917) and his _Poems 1916-18_ (1919) contain the best of his verse.

LOCHANILAUN

This is the image of my last content: My soul shall be a little lonely lake, So hidden that no shadow of man may break The folding of its mountain battlement; Only the beautiful and innocent Whiteness of sea-born cloud drooping to shake Cool rain upon the reed-beds, or the wake Of churned cloud in a howling wind's descent. For there shall be no terror in the night When stars that I have loved are born in me, And cloudy darkness I will hold most fair; But this shall be the end of my delight:-- That you, my lovely one, may stoop and see Your image in the mirrored beauty there.

_F. S. Flint_

Known chiefly as an authority on modern French poetry, F. S. Flint has published several volumes of original imagist poems, besides having translated works of Verhaeren and Jean de Bosschere.

LONDON

London, my beautiful, it is not the sunset nor the pale green sky shimmering through the curtain of the silver birch, nor the quietness; it is not the hopping of birds upon the lawn, nor the darkness stealing over all things that moves me.

But as the moon creeps slowly over the tree-tops among the stars, I think of her and the glow her passing sheds on men.

London, my beautiful, I will climb into the branches to the moonlit tree-tops, that my blood may be cooled by the wind.

_Edith Sitwell_

Edith Sitwell was born at Scarborough, in Yorkshire, and is the sister of the poets, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell. In 1914 she came to London and has devoted herself to literature ever since, having edited the various anthologies of _Wheels_ since 1916. Her first book, _The Mother and Other Poems_ (1915), contains some of her best work, although _Clowns' Houses_ (1918) reveals a more piquant idiom and a sharper turn of mind.

THE WEB OF EROS

Within your magic web of hair, lies furled The fire and splendour of the ancient world; The dire gold of the comet's wind-blown hair; The songs that turned to gold the evening air When all the stars of heaven sang for joy. The flames that burnt the cloud-high city Troy. The maenad fire of spring on the cold earth; The myrrh-lit flame that gave both death and birth To the soul Phoenix; and the star-bright shower That came to Danae in her brazen tower.... Within your magic web of hair lies furled The fire and splendour of the ancient world.

INTERLUDE

Amid this hot green glowing gloom A word falls with a raindrop's boom....

Like baskets of ripe fruit in air The bird-songs seem, suspended where

Those goldfinches--the ripe warm lights Peck slyly at them--take quick flights.

My feet are feathered like a bird Among the shadows scarcely heard;

I bring you branches green with dew And fruits that you may crown anew

Your whirring waspish-gilded hair Amid this cornucopia--

Until your warm lips bear the stains And bird-blood leap within your veins.

_F. W. Harvey_