Poetry Please - A Little Culture For The Masses

[aardvark6535]

Wilfred Owen

 

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

 

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

 

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Background

 

In October 1917, Wilfred Owen wrote to his mother from Craiglockhart Hospital: ‘Here is a gas poem, done yesterday……..the famous Latin tag (from Horace, Odes) means of course it is sweet and meet to die for one’s country. Sweet! and decorous!’

Although he drafted the poem that October, the surviving drafts of ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ show that Owen revised and revisited it on several occasions thereafter, before his death the following November – one week before the Armistice.

 

Although he wrote all his poetry while he was still a young man – he died aged just 25,

[crisispoint]

On 28/11/2023 at 08:02, aardvark6535 said:

At an all-boys school, we were all spell bound by "The Highwayman" at playtime, cutlasses and flintlocks were in abundance.

 

"The Highwayman"  by Alfred Noyes

 

PART ONE

 

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.   

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.   

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,   

And the highwayman came riding—

         Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

 

He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,   

A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.

They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh.   

And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,

         His pistol butts a-twinkle,

His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

 

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard.

He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.   

He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there   

But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

         Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

 

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked

Where Tim the ostler listened. His face was white and peaked.   

His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,   

But he loved the landlord’s daughter,

         The landlord’s red-lipped daughter.

Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

 

“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize to-night,

But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;

Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,   

Then look for me by moonlight,

         Watch for me by moonlight,

I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”

 

He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach her hand,

But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand

As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;   

And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,

         (O, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)

Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.

 

PART TWO

 

He did not come in the dawning. He did not come at noon;   

And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,   

When the road was a gypsy’s ribbon, looping the purple moor,   

A red-coat troop came marching—

         Marching—marching—

King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

 

They said no word to the landlord. They drank his ale instead.   

But they gagged his daughter, and bound her, to the foot of her narrow bed.

Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!   

There was death at every window;

         And hell at one dark window;

For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

 

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest.

They had bound a musket beside her, with the muzzle beneath her breast!

“Now, keep good watch!” and they kissed her. She heard the doomed man say—

Look for me by moonlight;

         Watch for me by moonlight;

I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

 

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!

She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!   

They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years

Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,

         Cold, on the stroke of midnight,

The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

 

The tip of one finger touched it. She strove no more for the rest.   

Up, she stood up to attention, with the muzzle beneath her breast.   

She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;   

For the road lay bare in the moonlight;

         Blank and bare in the moonlight;

And the blood of her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love’s refrain.

 

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horsehoofs ringing clear;   

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?

Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,

The highwayman came riding—

         Riding—riding—

The red coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still.

 

Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!   

Nearer he came and nearer. Her face was like a light.

Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,   

Then her finger moved in the moonlight,

         Her musket shattered the moonlight,

Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.

 

He turned. He spurred to the west; he did not know who stood   

Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own blood!   

Not till the dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to hear   

How Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

         The landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

 

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,

With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high.

Blood red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat;

When they shot him down on the highway,

         Down like a dog on the highway,

And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.

 

.       .       .

 

And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,

When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,   

When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,   

A highwayman comes riding—

         Riding—riding—

A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

 

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard.

He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred.   

He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there   

But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

         Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

Thank you I enjoyed that 

[aardvark6535]

The Last Flame of Port Talbot -Anon

 

The furnace roars its final cry,

A sky once bright, now dimmed and dry,

The smoke that kissed the morning air,

Now drifts away, no longer there.

In molten rivers, steel once flowed,

Through hands of those who shaped and sowed,

A legacy in fire and might,

Now flickers in the fading light.

The clang of iron, the heat so near,

The hum of labour, loud and clear,

But now that hum has turned to hush,

As silence grips the evening’s blush.

Generations stood so proud,

Beneath the furnace, fierce and loud,

Fathers, sons, their strength combined,

In every spark, their dreams aligned.

But dreams can fade like cooling steel,

And leave a wound that time won’t heal,

The heart of Port Talbot beats slow,

A chapter closed, with nowhere to go.

Yet in our blood, the fire remains,

In every soul, a spark sustains,

For though the furnace breathes no more,

Its spirit lingers on our shore.

Port Talbot, strong, though times may shift,

We carry forward, though we drift,

For in the embers, still we see,

The flame of hope, for what will be.

 

Another nail in the Coffin of Great Britan, if you want new steel for your project, your going to have to import it, prob. from China.

[crisispoint]

 

There Are Too Many Saviors on My Cross There are too many saviors on my cross, lending their blood to flood out my ballot box with needs of their own. Who put you there? Who told you that that was your place? You carry me secretly naked in your heart and clothe me publicly in armor crying “God is on our side,” yet I openly cry Who is on mine? Who? Tell me, who? You who bury your sons and cripple your fathers whilst you bury my father in crippling his son. The antiquated Saxon sword, rusty in its scabbard of time now rises— you gave it cause in my name, bringing shame to the thorned head that once bled for your salvation. I hear your daily cries in the far-off byways in your mouth pointing north and south and my Calvary looms again, desperate in rebirth. Your earth is partitioned, but in contrition it is the partition in your hearts that you must abolish. You nightly watchers of Gethsemene who sat through my nightly trial delivering me from evil— now deserted, I watch you share your silver. Your purse, rich in hate, bleeds my veins of love, shattering my bone in the dust of the bogside and the Shankhill road. There is no issue stronger than the tissue of love, no need as holy as the palm outstretched in the run of generosity, no monstrosity greater than the acre you inflict. Who gave you the right to increase your fold and decrease the pastures of my flock? Who gave you the right? Who gave it to you? Who? And in whose name do you fight? I am not in heaven, I am here, hear me. I am in you, feel me. I am of you, be me. I am with you, see me. I am for you, need me. I am all mankind; only through kindness will you reach me. What masked and bannered men can rock the ark and navigate a course to their annointed kingdom come? Who sailed their captain to waters that they troubled in my font, sinking in the ignorant seas of prejudice? There is no virgin willing to conceive in the heat of any bloody Sunday. You crippled children lying in cries on Derry’s streets, pushing your innocence to the full flush face of Christian guns, battling the blame on each other, do not grow tongues in your dying dumb wounds speaking my name. I am not your prize in your death. You have exorcized me in your game of politics. Go home to your knees and worship me in any cloth, for I was never tailor-made. Who told you I was? Who gave you the right to think it? Take your beads in your crippled hands, can you count my decades? Take my love in your crippled hearts, can you count the loss? I am not orange. I am not green. I am a half-ripe fruit needing both colors to grow into ripeness, and shame on you to have withered my orchard. I in my poverty, alone without trust, cry shame on you and shame on you again and again for converting me into a bullet and shooting me into men’s hearts. The ageless legend of my trial grows old in the youth of your pulse staggering shamelessly from barricade to grave, filing in the book of history my needless death one April. Let me, in my betrayal, lie low in my grave, and you, in your bitterness, lie low in yours, for our measurements grow strangely dissimilar. Our Father, who art in heaven, sullied be thy name.   Not as apt now, maybe, but still good.

[crisispoint]

Just now, crisispoint said:

 

There Are Too Many Saviors on My Cross There are too many saviors on my cross, lending their blood to flood out my ballot box with needs of their own. Who put you there? Who told you that that was your place? You carry me secretly naked in your heart and clothe me publicly in armor crying “God is on our side,” yet I openly cry Who is on mine? Who? Tell me, who? You who bury your sons and cripple your fathers whilst you bury my father in crippling his son. The antiquated Saxon sword, rusty in its scabbard of time now rises— you gave it cause in my name, bringing shame to the thorned head that once bled for your salvation. I hear your daily cries in the far-off byways in your mouth pointing north and south and my Calvary looms again, desperate in rebirth. Your earth is partitioned, but in contrition it is the partition in your hearts that you must abolish. You nightly watchers of Gethsemene who sat through my nightly trial delivering me from evil— now deserted, I watch you share your silver. Your purse, rich in hate, bleeds my veins of love, shattering my bone in the dust of the bogside and the Shankhill road. There is no issue stronger than the tissue of love, no need as holy as the palm outstretched in the run of generosity, no monstrosity greater than the acre you inflict. Who gave you the right to increase your fold and decrease the pastures of my flock? Who gave you the right? Who gave it to you? Who? And in whose name do you fight? I am not in heaven, I am here, hear me. I am in you, feel me. I am of you, be me. I am with you, see me. I am for you, need me. I am all mankind; only through kindness will you reach me. What masked and bannered men can rock the ark and navigate a course to their annointed kingdom come? Who sailed their captain to waters that they troubled in my font, sinking in the ignorant seas of prejudice? There is no virgin willing to conceive in the heat of any bloody Sunday. You crippled children lying in cries on Derry’s streets, pushing your innocence to the full flush face of Christian guns, battling the blame on each other, do not grow tongues in your dying dumb wounds speaking my name. I am not your prize in your death. You have exorcized me in your game of politics. Go home to your knees and worship me in any cloth, for I was never tailor-made. Who told you I was? Who gave you the right to think it? Take your beads in your crippled hands, can you count my decades? Take my love in your crippled hearts, can you count the loss? I am not orange. I am not green. I am a half-ripe fruit needing both colors to grow into ripeness, and shame on you to have withered my orchard. I in my poverty, alone without trust, cry shame on you and shame on you again and again for converting me into a bullet and shooting me into men’s hearts. The ageless legend of my trial grows old in the youth of your pulse staggering shamelessly from barricade to grave, filing in the book of history my needless death one April. Let me, in my betrayal, lie low in my grave, and you, in your bitterness, lie low in yours, for our measurements grow strangely dissimilar. Our Father, who art in heaven, sullied be thy name.   Not as apt now, maybe, but still good.

Sorry Richard Harris

[Baron99]

G. K. Chesterton. The Secret People. 

Written in 1908, yet the last verse could be relevant today?  They aught to pin it permanently to the door of No. 10 & every Town Hall in the land. 

 

We lay in living ruins; firing and fearing not
The strange fierce face of the Frenchman who knew for what he fought,
And the man who seemed to be more than man we strained against and broke;
And we broke our own rights with him. And still we never spoke.

Our path of glory ended; we never heard guns again.
But the squire seemed struck in the saddle; he was foolish, as if in pain.
He leaned on a staggering lawyer, he clutched a cringing Jew,
He was stricken; it may be, after all, he was stricken at Waterloo.
Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men, whose spoil is in his house,
Come back in shining shapes at last to spoil his last carouse:
We only know the last sad squires ride slowly towards the sea,
And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.

They have given us into the hands of the new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evenings; and they know no songs.

We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

 

 

[aardvark6535]

34 minutes ago, Baron99 said:

They have given us into the hands of the new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evenings; and they know no songs.

This verse does it for me,  and the first line tells it all - "They have given us into the hands of the new unhappy lords"

34 minutes ago, Baron99 said:

 

 

 

[crisispoint]

1 hour ago, Baron99 said:

G. K. Chesterton. The Secret People. 

Written in 1908, yet the last verse could be relevant today?  They aught to pin it permanently to the door of No. 10 & every Town Hall in the land. 

 

We lay in living ruins; firing and fearing not
The strange fierce face of the Frenchman who knew for what he fought,
And the man who seemed to be more than man we strained against and broke;
And we broke our own rights with him. And still we never spoke.

Our path of glory ended; we never heard guns again.
But the squire seemed struck in the saddle; he was foolish, as if in pain.
He leaned on a staggering lawyer, he clutched a cringing Jew,
He was stricken; it may be, after all, he was stricken at Waterloo.
Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men, whose spoil is in his house,
Come back in shining shapes at last to spoil his last carouse:
We only know the last sad squires ride slowly towards the sea,
And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.

They have given us into the hands of the new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evenings; and they know no songs.

We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

 

 

A very powerful piece of writing

Thank you