Songs for a Little House | Page 9

still?Be flappers in the surf at Rhyl??O how I counted on the hour?When he would see the Woolworth Tower,?And how we set our hearts upon?The steep grey walls of Carcassonne!
TO RUDYARD KIPLING
For His Fiftieth Birthday (December 30, 1915)
Lord of our noble English tongue,?Who holdest seizin of our speech,?Whose epic Mowgli first did reach?The valves of all our hearts when young--
Master of every grace and ire,?Wide as the salt-winged fulmar gulls?That circle England's battle hulls,?Your songs have fanned the Imperial fire.
By Oak and Ash and Thorns, by all?Old memories of Sussex sod,?To you we pile the altar clod?And ask a new Recessional.
TO A U-BOAT
With Apologies to William Blake
Tiger, tiger of the seas,?King of scarlet butcheries,?What infernal hand and eye?Planned your dread machinery?
Men of Hamburg, Bremen, Kiel,?Watch the gauge and turn the wheel,?Proud, perhaps, to have defiled?Oceans, to destroy a child.
With your thunderbolt you strike?Cargo, women, all alike--?Stain with red God's clean green sea,?Call it "naval victory."
U-boat, U-boat, as you grope?With your half-blind periscope,?Lo, your hateful trail we mark,?Send you to your kin, the shark!
KITCHENER
No man in England slept, the night he died:?The harsh, stern spirit passed without a pang,?And freed of mortal clogs his message rang.?In every wakeful mind the challenge cried:?_Think not of me: one servant less or more?Means nothing now: hold fast the greater thing--?Strike hard, love truth, serve England and the King!_
Servant of England, soldier to the core,?What does it matter where his body fall??What does it matter where they build the tomb??Five million men, from Calais to Khartoum,?These are his wreath and his memorial.
MARCH 1915
_Pussy willow, pussy willow?Do you bloom in Belgium now?_
Tiny furry little catkins?Where the Meuse runs green and clear,?Do the children run to pick you?In this springtime of the year??Do they stroke you and caress you?Kiss the silky balls of fur,?Take you to the priest to bless you?And pretend to hear you purr??Do their small hot fingers wilt you??(Sweethearts, you remember how--)
_Pussy willow, pussy willow,?Do you bloom in Belgium now?_
DEAD SHIPS
We are not sudden haters; but by dint?Of many horrors all our hearts are quick.?We are not ready writers, with the trick?Of rhyming just to see our words in print.?Nor are we fast forgetters: there remain?Bitter and shameful in our memory?Old murders that made horrible the sea?And tinged clean water with a red, red stain.?_Titanic_: she went down for love of speed;?The _Eastland_--curse her!--just for dirty greed;?But there are ships whose names are yet more rank.?The years have passed, but still our hearts are sick?To think of the cool cruelty that sank?The _Lusitania_ and the _Arabic_.
ENGLAND, JULY 1913
To Rupert Brooke
O England, England ... that July?How placidly the days went by!
Two years ago (how long it seems)?In that dear England of my dreams?I loved and smoked and laughed amain?And rode to Cambridge in the rain.?A careless godlike life was there!?To spin the roads with _Shotover_,?To dream while punting on the Cam,?To lie, and never give a damn?For anything but comradeship?And books to read and ale to sip,?And shandygaff at every inn?When _The Gorilla_ rode to Lynn!?O world of wheel and pipe and oar?In those old days before the War.?O poignant echoes of that time!?I hear the Oxford towers chime,?The throbbing of those mellow bells?And all the sweet old English smells--?The Deben water, quick with salt,?The Woodbridge brew-house and the malt;?The Suffolk villages, serene?With lads at cricket on the green,?And Wytham strawberries, so ripe,?And _Murray's Mixture_ in my pipe!
In those dear days, in those dear days,?All pleasant lay the country ways;?The echoes of our stalwart mirth?Went echoing wide around the earth?And in an endless bliss of sun?We lay and watched the river run.?And you by Cam and I by Isis?Were happy with our own devices.
Ah, can we ever know again?Such friends as were those chosen men,?Such men to drink, to bike, to smoke with,?To worship with, or lie and joke with??Never again, my lads, we'll see?The life we led at twenty-three.?Never again, perhaps, shall I?Go flashing bravely down the High?To see, in that transcendent hour,?The sunset glow on Magdalen Tower.
Dear Rupert Brooke, your words recall?Those endless afternoons, and all?Your Cambridge--which I loved as one?Who was her grandson, not her son.?O ripples where the river slacks?In greening eddies round the "backs";?Where men have dreamed such gallant things?Under the old stone bridge at _King's_,?Or leaned to feed the silver swans?By the tennis meads at _John's_.?O Granta's water, cold and fresh,?Kissing the warm and eager flesh?Under the willow's breathing stir--?The bathing pool at _Grantchester_....?What words can tell, what words can praise?The burly savour of those days!
Dear singing lad, those days are dead?And gone for aye your golden head;?And many other well-loved men?Will never dine in Hall again.?I too have lived remembered hours?In Cambridge; heard the summer showers?Make music on old _Heffer's_ pane?While I was reading Pepys or Taine.?Through _Trumpington_ and _Grantchester_?I used to roll on _Shotover_;?At _Hauxton Bridge_ my