The Seashell Anthology of Great Poetry Read online

Owen

  Anthem for Doomed Youth

  What passing bells for these who die as cattle?

  Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

  Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

  Can patter out their hasty orisons.

  No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,

  Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs—

  The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

  And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

  What candles may be held to speed them all?

  Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes

  Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

  The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

  Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

  And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

  Wilfred Owen, 1917

  Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Owen

  The Send-Off

  Down the close, darkening lanes they sang

  their way

  To the siding-shed,

  And lined the train with faces grimly gay.

  Their breasts were stuck all white with

  wreath and spray

  As men's are, dead.

  Dull porters watched them, and a casual

  tramp

  Stood staring hard,

  Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.

  Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp

  Winked to the guard.

  So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.

  They were not ours:

  We never heard to which front

  these were sent.

  Nor there if they yet mock what women

  meant

  Who gave them flowers.

  Shall they return to beatings of great bells

  In wild trainloads?

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

  May creep back, silent, to still village wells

  Up half-known roads.

  Wilfred Owen, 1918

  Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> 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 Honor. "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, 1918

  Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Reed

  Naming of Parts

  Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,

  We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,

  We shall have what to do after firing.

  But today,

  Today we have naming of parts. Japonica

  Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring

  gardens,

  And today we have naming of parts.

  This is the lower sling swivel. And this

  Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you

  will see,

  When you are given your slings. And this is

  the piling swivel,

  Which in your case you have not got.

  The branches

  Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent

  gestures,

  Which in our case we have not got.

  This is the safety-catch, which is always

  released

  With an easy flick of the thumb. And please

  do not let me

  See anyone using his finger. You can do it

  quite easy

  If you have any strength in your thumb.

  The blossoms

  Are fragile and motionless, never letting

  anyone see

  Any of them using their finger.

  And this you can see is the bolt.

  The purpose of this

  Is to open the breech, as you see.

  We can slide it

  Rapidly backwards and forwards;

  we call this

  Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards

  and forwards

  The early bees are assaulting and

  fumbling the flowers:

  They call it easing the Spring.

  They call it easing the Spring.

  It is perfectly easy

  If you have any strength in your thumb:

  like the bolt,

  And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and

  the point of balance,

  Which in our case we have not got;

  and the almond blossom

  Silent in all of the gardens and the bees

  going backwards and forwards,

  For today we have naming of parts.

  Henry Reed, 1946

  Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Howe

  The Battle Hymn of the Republic

  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the

  coming of the Lord:

  He is trampling out the vintage where

  the grapes of wrath are stored;

  He hath loosed the fatal lightning of His

  terrible swift sword:

  His truth is marching on.

  I have seen Him in the watch-fires of

  a hundred circling camps,

  They have builded Him an altar in the

  evening dews and damps;

  I can read His righteous sentence by the

  dim and flaring lamps:

  His day is marching on.

  I have read a fiery gospel writ in

  burnished rows of steel:

  "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you

  my grace shall deal;

  Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the

  serpent with his heel,

  Since God is marching on."

  He has sounded forth the trumpet

  that shall never call retreat;

  He is sifting out the hearts of men

  before His judgment seat:

  Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him!

  Be jubilant, my feet!

  Our God is marching on.

  In the beauty of the lilies Christ was

  born across the sea,

  With a glory in his bosom that

  transfigures you and me:

  As he died to make men holy, let us

  die to make men free,

  While God is marching on.

  Julia Ward Howe, 1862

  Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Shakespeare

  If we are marked to die

  KING HENRY: If we are marked to die,

  we are enough

  To do our country loss; and if to live,

  The fewer men, the greater share of honor.

  God's will! I pray thee, wish not

  one man more.

  By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,

  Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;

  It yearns me not if men my garments wear;

  Such outward things dwell not in my desires:

  But if it be a sin to covet honor,

  I am the most offending soul alive.

  No, faith, my coz, wish not a man

  from England:

  God's peace! I would not lose so

  great an honor

  As one man more, methinks, would share

  from me

  For the best hope I have. O, do not wish

  one more!

  Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland,

  through my host,

  That he which hath no stomach to this fight,

  Let him depart; his passport shall be made

  And crowns for convoy put into his purse:

  We would not die in that man's company

  That fears his fellowship to die w
ith us.

  This day is called the feast of Crispian:

  He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

  Will stand a tiptoe when this day is named,

  And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

  He that shall live this day, and see old age,

  Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,

  And say "Tomorrow is Saint Crispian:"

  Then will he strip his sleeve and

  show his scars,

  And say "These wounds I had on

  Crispin's day."

  Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,

  But he'll remember with advantages

  What feats he did that day: then shall

  our names,

  Familiar in his mouth as household words,

  Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,

  Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury

  and Gloucester,

  Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.

  This story shall the good man teach

  his son.

  And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

  From this day to the ending of the world

  But we in it shall be remembered;

  We few, we happy few, we band

  of brothers

  For he today that sheds his blood with me

  Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

  This day shall gentle his condition:

  And gentlemen in England now a-bed

  Shall think themselves accursed they

  were not here,

  And hold their manhoods cheap whiles

  he speaks

  That fought with us upon Saint

  Crispian's day.

  William Shakespeare, 1599

  King Henry V, Act IV, Scene 2

  Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> McKay

  If We Must Die

  If we must die, let it not be like hogs

  Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

  While round us bark the mad and

  hungry dogs,

  Making their mock at our accursed lot.

  If we must die, O let us nobly die,

  So that our precious blood may not be shed

  In vain; then even the monsters we defy

  Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

  O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!

  Though far outnumbered let us show

  us brave,

  And for their thousand blows deal one

  deathblow!

  What though before us lies the open grave?

  Like men we'll face the murderous,

  cowardly pack,

  Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

  Claude McKay, 1919

  Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Whitman

  An Army Corps on the March

  With its cloud of skirmishers in advance,

  With now the sound of a single shot snapping

  like a whip, and now an irregular volley,

  The swarming ranks press on and on,

  the dense brigades press on,

  Glittering dimly, toiling under the sun—

  the dust-covered men,

  In columns rise and fall to the undulations

  of the ground,

  With artillery interspersed—the wheels rumble,

  the horses sweat,

  As the army corps advances.

  Walt Whitman, 1865

  Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Sassoon

  Counterattack

  We'd gained our first objective hours before

  While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,

  Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.

  Things seemed all right at first. We held

  their line,

  With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed,

  And clink of shovels deepening the shallow

  trench.

  The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs

  High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along

  the saps

  And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,

  Wallowed like trodden sandbags loosely filled;

  And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,

  Bulged, clotted heads slept in the

  plastering slime.

  And then the rain began,—the jolly old rain!

  A yawning soldier knelt against the bank,

  Staring across the morning blear with fog;

  He wondered when the Allemands

  would get busy;

  And then, of course, they started with

  five-nines

  Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud.

  Mute in the clamor of shells he watched

  them burst

  Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts

  from hell,

  While posturing giants dissolved in drifts

  of smoke.

  He crouched and flinched, dizzy with

  galloping fear,

  Sick for escape,—loathing the strangled horror

  And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.

  An officer came blundering down the trench:

  "Stand-to and man the fire-step!" On he went . . .

  Gasping and bawling, "Fire-step . . .

  counterattack!"

  Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right

  Down the old sap: machine-guns on the left;

  And stumbling figures looming out in front.

  "O Christ, they're coming at us!" Bullets spat,

  And he remembered his rifle . . . rapid fire . . .

  And started blazing wildly . . . then a bang

  Crumpled and spun him sideways,

  knocked him out

  To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him;

  he choked

  And fought the flapping veils of smothering

  gloom,

  Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans . . .

  Down, and down, and down, he sank

  and drowned,

  Bleeding to death. The counterattack had failed.

  Siegfried Sassoon, 1918

  Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> 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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines that

  dropped 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.

  Wilfred Owen, 1920

  Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Spender

  Ultima Ratio Regum
r />   The guns spell money's ultimate reason

  In letters of lead on the Spring hillside.

  But the boy lying dead under the olive trees

  Was too young and too silly

  To have been notable to their important eye.

  He was a better target for a kiss.

  When he lived, tall factory hooters never

  summoned him.

  Nor did restaurant plate-glass doors revolve to

  wave him in.

  His name never appeared in the papers.

  The world maintained its traditional wall

  Round the dead with their gold sunk deep

  as a well

  Whilst his life, intangible as a Stock Exchange

  rumor, drifted outside.

  O too lightly he threw down his cap

  One day when the breeze threw petals from

  the trees.

  The unflowering wall sprouted with guns,

  Machine gun anger quickly scythed the grasses;

  Flags and leaves fell from hands and branches;

  The tweed cap rotted in the nettles.

  Consider his life which was valueless

  In terms of employment, hotel ledgers, news files.

  Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.

  Ask. Was so much expenditure justified

  On the death of one so young and so silly

  Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death?

  Stephen Spender, 1942

  Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Jarrell

  The Death of the Ball Turret

  Gunner

  From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,

  And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

  Six miles from earth, loosed from its

  dream of life,

  I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

  When I died they washed me out of the turret

  with a hose.

  Randall Jarrell, 1945

  Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Owen

  Arms and the Boy

  Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade

  How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;

  Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;

  And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.

  Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads

  Which long to nuzzle in the hearts of lads,

  Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,