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Best Famous Campaign Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Campaign poems. This is a select list of the best famous Campaign poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Campaign poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of campaign poems.

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Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

A Carol of Harvest for 1867

 1
A SONG of the good green grass! 
A song no more of the city streets; 
A song of farms—a song of the soil of fields. 

A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork; 
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk’d maize.

2
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself, 
Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields, 
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee, 
Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart, 
Tuning a verse for thee.

O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice! 
O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths! 
O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb! 
A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee. 

3
Ever upon this stage,
Is acted God’s calm, annual drama, 
Gorgeous processions, songs of birds, 
Sunrise, that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul, 
The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves, 
The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees,
The flowers, the grass, the lilliput, countless armies of the grass, 
The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages, 
The scenery of the snows, the winds’ free orchestra, 
The stretching, light-hung roof of clouds—the clear cerulean, and the bulging,
 silvery
 fringes, 
The high dilating stars, the placid, beckoning stars,
The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows, 
The shows of all the varied lands, and all the growths and products. 

4
Fecund America! To-day, 
Thou art all over set in births and joys! 
Thou groan’st with riches! thy wealth clothes thee as with a swathing garment!
Thou laughest loud with ache of great possessions! 
A myriad-twining life, like interlacing vines, binds all thy vast demesne! 
As some huge ship, freighted to water’s edge, thou ridest into port! 
As rain falls from the heaven, and vapors rise from earth, so have the precious values
 fallen
 upon thee, and risen out of thee! 
Thou envy of the globe! thou miracle!
Thou, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty! 
Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil barns! 
Thou Prairie Dame that sittest in the middle, and lookest out upon thy world, and lookest
 East,
 and lookest West! 
Dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles—that giv’st a million
 farms,
 and missest nothing! 
Thou All-Acceptress—thou Hospitable—(thou only art hospitable, as God is
 hospitable.)

5
When late I sang, sad was my voice; 
Sad were the shows around me, with deafening noises of hatred, and smoke of conflict; 
In the midst of the armies, the Heroes, I stood, 
Or pass’d with slow step through the wounded and dying. 

But now I sing not War,
Nor the measur’d march of soldiers, nor the tents of camps, 
Nor the regiments hastily coming up, deploying in line of battle. 

No more the dead and wounded; 
No more the sad, unnatural shows of War. 

Ask’d room those flush’d immortal ranks? the first forth-stepping armies?
Ask room, alas, the ghastly ranks—the armies dread that follow’d. 

6
(Pass—pass, ye proud brigades! 
So handsome, dress’d in blue—with your tramping, sinewy legs; 
With your shoulders young and strong—with your knapsacks and your muskets; 
—How elate I stood and watch’d you, where, starting off, you march’d!

Pass;—then rattle, drums, again! 
Scream, you steamers on the river, out of whistles loud and shrill, your salutes! 
For an army heaves in sight—O another gathering army! 
Swarming, trailing on the rear—O you dread, accruing army! 
O you regiments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhoea! with your fever!
O my land’s maimed darlings! with the plenteous bloody bandage and the crutch! 
Lo! your pallid army follow’d!) 

7
But on these days of brightness, 
On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes, the high-piled
 farm-wagons, and
 the fruits and barns, 
Shall the dead intrude?

Ah, the dead to me mar not—they fit well in Nature; 
They fit very well in the landscape, under the trees and grass, 
And along the edge of the sky, in the horizon’s far margin. 

Nor do I forget you, departed; 
Nor in winter or summer, my lost ones;
But most, in the open air, as now, when my soul is rapt and at peace—like pleasing
 phantoms, 
Your dear memories, rising, glide silently by me. 

8
I saw the day, the return of the Heroes; 
(Yet the Heroes never surpass’d, shall never return; 
Them, that day, I saw not.)

I saw the interminable Corps—I saw the processions of armies, 
I saw them approaching, defiling by, with divisions, 
Streaming northward, their work done, camping awhile in clusters of mighty camps. 

No holiday soldiers!—youthful, yet veterans; 
Worn, swart, handsome, strong, of the stock of homestead and workshop,
Harden’d of many a long campaign and sweaty march, 
Inured on many a hard-fought, bloody field. 

9
A pause—the armies wait; 
A million flush’d, embattled conquerors wait; 
The world, too, waits—then, soft as breaking night, and sure as dawn,
They melt—they disappear. 

Exult, indeed, O lands! victorious lands! 
Not there your victory, on those red, shuddering fields; 
But here and hence your victory. 

Melt, melt away, ye armies! disperse, ye blue-clad soldiers!
Resolve ye back again—give up, for good, your deadly arms; 
Other the arms, the fields henceforth for you, or South or North, or East or West, 
With saner wars—sweet wars—life-giving wars. 

10
Loud, O my throat, and clear, O soul! 
The season of thanks, and the voice of full-yielding;
The chant of joy and power for boundless fertility. 

All till’d and untill’d fields expand before me; 
I see the true arenas of my race—or first, or last, 
Man’s innocent and strong arenas. 

I see the Heroes at other toils;
I see, well-wielded in their hands, the better weapons. 

11
I see where America, Mother of All, 
Well-pleased, with full-spanning eye, gazes forth, dwells long, 
And counts the varied gathering of the products. 

Busy the far, the sunlit panorama;
Prairie, orchard, and yellow grain of the North, 
Cotton and rice of the South, and Louisianian cane; 
Open, unseeded fallows, rich fields of clover and timothy, 
Kine and horses feeding, and droves of sheep and swine, 
And many a stately river flowing, and many a jocund brook,
And healthy uplands with their herby-perfumed breezes, 
And the good green grass—that delicate miracle, the ever-recurring grass. 

12
Toil on, Heroes! harvest the products! 
Not alone on those warlike fields, the Mother of All, 
With dilated form and lambent eyes, watch’d you.

Toil on, Heroes! toil well! Handle the weapons well! 
The Mother of All—yet here, as ever, she watches you. 

Well-pleased, America, thou beholdest, 
Over the fields of the West, those crawling monsters, 
The human-divine inventions, the labor-saving implements:
Beholdest, moving in every direction, imbued as with life, the revolving hay-rakes, 
The steam-power reaping-machines, and the horse-power machines, 
The engines, thrashers of grain, and cleaners of grain, well separating the straw—the
 nimble work of the patent pitch-fork; 
Beholdest the newer saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin, and the rice-cleanser. 

Beneath thy look, O Maternal,
With these, and else, and with their own strong hands, the Heroes harvest. 

All gather, and all harvest; 
(Yet but for thee, O Powerful! not a scythe might swing, as now, in security; 
Not a maize-stalk dangle, as now, its silken tassels in peace.) 

13
Under Thee only they harvest—even but a wisp of hay, under thy great face, only;
Harvest the wheat of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin—every barbed spear, under thee; 
Harvest the maize of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee—each ear in its light-green
 sheath, 
Gather the hay to its myriad mows, in the odorous, tranquil barns, 
Oats to their bins—the white potato, the buckwheat of Michigan, to theirs; 
Gather the cotton in Mississippi or Alabama—dig and hoard the golden, the sweet
 potato of
 Georgia and the Carolinas,
Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania, 
Cut the flax in the Middle States, or hemp, or tobacco in the Borders, 
Pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the trees, or bunches of grapes from the
 vines, 
Or aught that ripens in all These States, or North or South, 
Under the beaming sun, and under Thee.


Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

Incompatabilities

 For Brenda Williams



La lune diminue; divin septembre.

Divine September the moon wanes.

 Pierre Jean Jouve



Themes for poems and the detritus of dreams coalesce:

This is one September I shall not forget.



The grammar-school caretaker always had the boards re-blacked

And the floors waxed, but I never shone.

The stripes of the red and black blazer

Were prison-grey. You could never see things that way:

Your home had broken windows to the street.

You had the mortification of lice in your hair

While I had the choice of Brylcreem or orange pomade.





Four children, an alcoholic father and

An Irish immigrant mother. Failure’s metaphor.

I did not make it like Alan Bennett,

Who still sends funny postcards

About our Leeds childhood.

Of your’s, you could never speak

And found my nostalgia

Wholly inappropriate.



Forgetting your glasses for the eleven plus,

No money for the uniform for the pass at thirteen.

It wasn’t - as I imagined - shame that kept you from telling

But fear of the consequences for your mother

Had you sobbed the night’s terrors

Of your father’s drunken homecomings,

Your mother sat with the door open

In all weathers while you, the oldest,

Waited with her, perhaps

Something might have been done.



He never missed a day’s work digging graves,

Boasting he could do a six-footer

Single-handed in two hours flat.

That hackneyed phrase

‘He drank all his wages’

Doesn’t convey his nightly rages

The flow of obscenities about menstruation

While the three younger ones were in bed

And you waited with your mother

To walk the streets of Seacroft.

“Your father murdered your mother”

As Auntie Margaret said,

Should a witness

Need indicting.



Your mother’s growing cancer went diagnosed, but unremarked

Until the final days

She was too busy auxiliary nursing

Or working in the Lakeside Caf?.

It was her wages that put bread and jam

And baked beans into your stomachs.



Her final hospitalisation

Was the arena for your father’s last rage

Her fare interfering with the night’s drinking;



He fought in the Burma Campaign but won no medals.

Some kind of psychiatric discharge- ‘paranoia’

Lurked in his papers. The madness went undiagnosed

Until his sixtieth birthday. You never let me meet him

Even after our divorce.



In the end you took me on a visit with the children.

A neat flat with photographs of grandchildren,

Stacks of wood for the stove, washing hung precisely

In the kitchen, a Sunday suit in the wardrobe.

An unwrinkling of smiles, the hard handshake

Of work-roughened hands.



One night he smashed up the tidy flat.

The TV screen was powder

The clock ticked on the neat lawn

‘Murder in Seacroft Hospital’

Emblazoned on the kitchen wall.



I went with you and your sister in her car to Roundhay Wing.

Your sister had to leave for work or sleep

You had to back to meet the children from school.

For Ward 42 it wasn’t an especially difficult admission.

My first lesson: I shut one set of firedoors while the charge nurse

Bolted the other but after five minutes his revolt

Was over and he signed the paper.



The nurse on nights had a sociology degree

And an interest in borderline schizophrenia.

After lightsout we chatted about Kohut and Kernberg

And Melanie Klein. Your father was occasionally truculent,

Barricading himself in on one home leave. Nothing out of the way

For a case of that kind. The old ladies on the estate sighed,

Single men were very scarce. Always a gentleman, tipping

His cap to the ladies.

There seems to be objections in the family to poetry

Or at least to the kind that actually speaks

And fails to lie down quietly on command.

Yours seems to have set mine alight-

I must get something right.
Written by Hilaire Belloc | Create an image from this poem

Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine

 To exalt, enthrone, establish and defend,
To welcome home mankind's mysterious friend
Wine, true begetter of all arts that be;
Wine, privilege of the completely free;
Wine the recorder; wine the sagely strong;
Wine, bright avenger of sly-dealing wrong,
Awake, Ausonian Muse, and sing the vineyard song!

Sing how the Charioteer from Asia came,
And on his front the little dancing flame
Which marked the God-head. Sing the Panther-team,
The gilded Thrysus twirling, and the gleam
Of cymbals through the darkness. Sing the drums.
He comes; the young renewer of Hellas comes!
The Seas await him. Those Aegean Seas
Roll from the dawning, ponderous, ill at ease,
In lifts of lead, whose cresting hardly breaks
To ghostly foam, when suddenly there awakes
A mountain glory inland. All the skies
Are luminous; and amid the sea bird cries
The mariner hears a morning breeze arise.
Then goes the Pageant forward. The sea-way
Silvers the feet of that august array
Trailing above the waters, through the airs;
And as they pass a wind before them bears
The quickening word, the influence magical.
The Islands have received it, marble-tall;
The long shores of the mainland. Something fills
The warm Euboean combes, the sacred hills
Of Aulis and of Argos. Still they move
Touching the City walls, the Temple grove,
Till, far upon the horizon-glint, a gleam
Of light, of trembling light, revealed they seem
Turned to a cloud, but to a cloud that shines,
And everywhere as they pass, the Vines! The Vines!
The Vines, the conquering Vines! And the Vine
breaths
Her savour through the upland, empty heaths
Of treeless wastes; the Vines have come to where
The dark Pelasgian steep defends the lair
Of the wolf's hiding; to the empty fields
By Aufidus, the dry campaign that yields
No harvest for the husbandman, but now
Shall bear a nobler foison than the plough;
To where, festooned along the tall elm trees,
Tendrils are mirrored in Tyrrhenian seas;
To where the South awaits them; even to where
Stark, African informed of burning air,
Upturned to Heaven the broad Hipponian plain
Extends luxurious and invites the main.
Guelma's a mother: barren Thaspsa breeds;
And northward in the valleys, next the meads
That sleep by misty river banks, the Vines
Have struck to spread below the solemn pines.
The Vines are on the roof-trees. All the Shrines
And Homes of men are consecrate with Vines.

And now the task of that triumphant day
Has reached to victory. In the reddening ray
With all his train, from hard Iberian lands
Fulfilled, apparent, that Creator stands
Halted on Atlas. Far Beneath him, far,
The strength of Ocean darkening and the star
Beyond all shores. There is a silence made.
It glorifies: and the gigantic shade
Of Hercules adores him from the West.
Dead Lucre: burnt Ambition: Wine is best.

But what are these that from the outer murk
Of dense mephitic vapours creeping lurk
To breathe foul airs from that corrupted well
Which oozes slime along the floor of Hell?
These are the stricken palsied brood of sin
In whose vile veins, poor, poisonous and thin,
Decoctions of embittered hatreds crawl:
These are the Water-Drinkers, cursed all!
On what gin-sodden Hags, what flaccid sires
Bred these White Slugs from what exhaust desires?
In what close prison's horror were their wiles
Watched by what tyrant power with evil smiles;
Or in what caverns, blocked from grace and air
Received they, then, the mandates of despair?
What! Must our race, our tragic race, that roam
All exiled from our first, and final, home:
That in one moment of temptation lost
Our heritage, and now wander, hunger-tost
Beyond the Gates (still speaking with our eyes
For ever of remembered Paradise),
Must we with every gift accepted, still,
With every joy, receive attendant ill?
Must some lewd evil follow all our good
And muttering dog our brief beatitude?

A primal doom, inexorable, wise,
Permitted, ordered, even these to rise.
Even in the shadow of so bright a Lord
Must swarm and propagate the filthy horde
Debased, accursed I say, abhorrent and abhorred.
Accursed and curse-bestowing. For whosoe'er
Shall suffer their contagion, everywhere
Falls from the estate of man and finds his end
To the mere beverage of the beast condemned.
For such as these in vain the Rhine has rolled
Imperial centuries by hills of gold;
For such as these the flashing Rhone shall rage
In vain its lightning through the Hermitage
Or level-browed divine Touraine receive
The tribute of her vintages at eve.
For such as these Burgundian heats in vain
Swell the rich slope or load the empurpled plain.
Bootless for such as these the mighty task
Of bottling God the Father in a flask
And leading all Creation down distilled
To one small ardent sphere immensely filled.
With memories empty, with experience null,
With vapid eye-balls meaningless and dull
They pass unblest through the unfruitful light;
And when we open the bronze doors of Night,
When we in high carousal, we reclined,
Spur up to Heaven the still ascending mind,
Pass with the all inspiring, to and fro,
The torch of genius and the Muse's glow,
They, lifeless, stare at vacancy alone
Or plan mean traffic, or repeat their moan.
We, when repose demands us, welcomed are
In young white arms, like our great Exemplar
Who, wearied with creation, takes his rest
And sinks to sleep on Ariadne's breast.
They through the darkness into darkness press
Despised, abandoned and companionless.
And when the course of either's sleep has run
We leap to life like heralds of the sun;
We from the couch in roseate mornings gay
Salute as equals the exultant day
While they, the unworthy, unrewarded, they
The dank despisers of the Vine, arise
To watch grey dawns and mourn indifferent skies.

Forget them! Form the Dionysian ring
And pulse the ground, and Io, Io, sing.

Father Lenaean, to whom our strength belongs,
Our loves, our wars, our laughter and our songs,
Remember our inheritance, who praise
Your glory in these last unhappy days
When beauty sickens and a muddied robe
Of baseness fouls the universal globe.
Though all the Gods indignant and their train
Abandon ruined man, do thou remain!
By thee the vesture of our life was made,
The Embattled Gate, the lordly Colonnade,
The woven fabric's gracious hues, the sound
Of trumpets, and the quivering fountain-round,
And, indestructible, the Arch, and, high,
The Shaft of Stone that stands against the sky,
And, last, the guardian-genius of them, Rhyme,
Come from beyond the world to conquer time:
All these are thine, Lenaean.

By thee do seers the inward light discern;
By thee the statue lives, the Gods return;
By thee the thunder and the falling foam
Of loud Acquoria's torrent call to Rome;
Alba rejoices in a thousand springs,
Gensano laughs, and Orvieto sings...
But, Ah! With Orvieto, with that name
Of dark, Eturian, subterranean flame
The years dissolve. I am standing in that hour
Of majesty Septembral, and the power
Which swells the clusters when the nights are still
With autumn stars on Orvieto hill.

Had these been mine, Ausonian Muse, to know
The large contented oxen heaving slow;
To count my sheaves at harvest; so to spend
Perfected days in peace until the end;
With every evening's dust of gold to hear
The bells upon the pasture height, the clear
Full horn of herdsmen gathering in the kine
To ancient byres in hamlets Appenine,
And crown abundant age with generous ease:
Had these, Ausonian Muse, had these, had these.....

But since I would not, since I could not stay,
Let me remember even in this my day
How, when the ephemeral vision's lure is past
All, all, must face their Passion at the last

Was there not one that did to Heaven complain
How, driving through the midnight and the rain,
He struck, the Atlantic seethe and surge before,
Wrecked in the North along a lonely shore
To make the lights of home and hear his name no
more.
Was there not one that from a desperate field
Rode with no guerdon but a rifted shield;
A name disherited; a broken sword;
Wounds unrenowned; battle beneath no Lord;
Strong blows, but on the void, and toil without
reward.

When from the waste of such long labour done
I too must leave the grape-ennobling sun
And like the vineyard worker take my way
Down the long shadows of declining day,
Bend on the sombre plain my clouded sight
And leave the mountain to the advancing night,
Come to the term of all that was mine own
With nothingness before me, and alone;
Then to what hope of answer shall I turn?
Comrade-Commander whom I dared not earn,
What said You then to trembling friends and
few?
"A moment, and I drink it with you new:
But in my Father's Kingdom." So, my Friend,
Let not Your cup desert me in the end.
But when the hour of mine adventure's near
Just and benignant, let my youth appear
Bearing a Chalice, open, golden, wide,
With benediction graven on its side.
So touch my dying lip: so bridge that deep:
So pledge my waking from the gift of sleep,
And, sacramental, raise me the Divine:
Strong brother in God and last companion, Wine.
Written by Emily Dickinson | Create an image from this poem

A little bread -- a crust -- a crumb

 A little bread -- a crust -- a crumb --
A little trust -- a demijohn --
Can keep the soul alive --
Not portly, mind! but breathing -- warm --
Conscious -- as old Napoleon,
The night before the Crown!

A modest lot -- A fame petite --
A brief Campaign of sting and sweet
Is plenty! Is enough!
A Sailor's business is the shore!
A Soldier's -- balls! Who asketh more,
Must seek the neighboring life!
Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

Sappers

 When the Waters were dried an' the Earth did appear,
 ("It's all one," says the Sapper),
The Lord He created the Engineer,
 Her Majesty's Royal Engineer,
 With the rank and pay of a Sapper!

When the Flood come along for an extra monsoon,
'Twas Noah constructed the first pontoon
 To the plans of Her Majesty's, etc.

But after fatigue in the wet an' the sun,
Old Noah got drunk, which he wouldn't ha' done
 If he'd trained with, etc.

When the Tower o' Babel had mixed up men's bat,
Some clever civilian was managing that,
 An' none of, etc.

When the Jews had a fight at the foot of a hill,
Young Joshua ordered the sun to stand still,
 For he was a Captain of Engineers, etc.

When the Children of Israel made bricks without straw,
They were learnin' the regular work of our Corps,
 The work of, etc.

For ever since then, if a war they would wage,
Behold us a-shinin' on history's page --
 First page for, etc.

We lay down their sidings an' help 'em entrain,
An' we sweep up their mess through the bloomin' campaign,
 In the style of, etc.

They send us in front with a fuse an' a mine
To blow up the gates that are rushed by the Line,
 But bent by, etc.

They send us behind with a pick an' a spade,
To dig for the guns of a bullock-brigade
 Which has asked for, etc.

We work under escort in trousers and shirt,
An' the heathen they plug us tail-up in the dirt,
 Annoying, etc.

We blast out the rock an' we shovel the mud,
We make 'em good roads an' -- they roll down the khud,
 Reporting, etc.

We make 'em their bridges, their wells, an' their huts,
An' the telegraph-wire the enemy cuts,
 An' it's blamed on, etc.

An' when we return, an' from war we would cease,
They grudge us adornin' the billets of peace,
 Which are kept for, etc.

We build 'em nice barracks -- they swear they are bad,
That our Colonels are Methodist, married or mad,
 Insultin', etc.

They haven't no manners nor gratitude too,
For the more that we help 'em, the less will they do,
 But mock at, etc.

Now the Line's but a man with a gun in his hand,
An' Cavalry's only what horses can stand,
 When helped by, etc.

Artillery moves by the leave o' the ground,
But we are the men that do something all round,
 For we are, etc.

I have stated it plain, an' my argument's thus
 ("It's all one," says the Sapper),
There's only one Corps which is perfect -- that's us;
 An' they call us Her Majesty's Engineers,
 Her Majesty's Royal Engineers,
 With the rank and pay of a Sapper!


Written by Emily Dickinson | Create an image from this poem

A wild Blue sky abreast of Winds

 A wild Blue sky abreast of Winds
That threatened it -- did run
And crouched behind his Yellow Door
Was the defiant sun --
Some conflict with those upper friends
So genial in the main
That we deplore peculiarly
Their arrogant campaign --
Written by Li Bai | Create an image from this poem

Ziyi Song

Chang-an -- one slip of moon;
in ten thousand houses, the sound of fulling mallets.
Autumn winds keep on blowing,
all things make me think of Jade Pass!
When will they put down the barbarians
and my good man come home from his far campaign? 

- English Translation -
Written by Emily Dickinson | Create an image from this poem

The Battle fought between the Soul

 The Battle fought between the Soul
And No Man -- is the One
Of all the Battles prevalent --
By far the Greater One --

No News of it is had abroad --
Its Bodiless Campaign
Establishes, and terminates --
Invisible -- Unknown --

Nor History -- record it --
As Legions of a Night
The Sunrise scatters -- These endure --
Enact -- and terminate --
Written by Carl Sandburg | Create an image from this poem

Among the Red Guns

 After waking at dawn one morning when the wind sang
low among dry leaves in an elm

AMONG the red guns,
In the hearts of soldiers
Running free blood
In the long, long campaign:
Dreams go on.

Among the leather saddles,
In the heads of soldiers
Heavy in the wracks and kills
Of all straight fighting:
Dreams go on.

Among the hot muzzles,
In the hands of soldiers
Brought from flesh-folds of women--
Soft amid the blood and crying--
In all your hearts and heads
Among the guns and saddles and muzzles:

Dreams,
Dreams go on,
Out of the dead on their backs,
Broken and no use any more:
Dreams of the way and the end go on.
Written by Robert Southey | Create an image from this poem

Botany Bay Eclogues 03 - Humphrey And William

 (Time, Noon.)


HUMPHREY:

See'st thou not William that the scorching Sun
By this time half his daily race has run?
The savage thrusts his light canoe to shore
And hurries homeward with his fishy store.
Suppose we leave awhile this stubborn soil
To eat our dinner and to rest from toil!


WILLIAM:

Agreed. Yon tree whose purple gum bestows
A ready medicine for the sick-man's woes,
Forms with its shadowy boughs a cool retreat
To shield us from the noontide's sultry heat.
Ah Humphrey! now upon old England's shore
The weary labourer's morning work is o'er:
The woodman now rests from his measur'd stroke
Flings down his axe and sits beneath the oak,
Savour'd with hunger there he eats his food,
There drinks the cooling streamlet of the wood.
To us no cooling streamlet winds its way,
No joys domestic crown for us the day,
The felon's name, the outcast's garb we wear,
Toil all the day, and all the night despair.


HUMPHREY:

Ah William! labouring up the furrowed ground
I used to love the village clock's dull sound,
Rejoice to hear my morning toil was done,
And trudge it homewards when the clock went one.
'Twas ere I turn'd a soldier and a sinner!
Pshaw! curse this whining--let us fall to dinner.


WILLIAM:

I too have loved this hour, nor yet forgot
Each joy domestic of my little cot.
For at this hour my wife with watchful care
Was wont each humbler dainty to prepare,
The keenest sauce by hunger was supplied
And my poor children prattled at my side.
Methinks I see the old oak table spread,
The clean white trencher and the good brown bread,
The cheese my daily food which Mary made,
For Mary knew full well the housewife's trade:
The jug of cyder,--cyder I could make,
And then the knives--I won 'em at the wake.
Another has them now! I toiling here
Look backward like a child and drop a tear.


HUMPHREY:

I love a dismal story, tell me thine,
Meantime, good Will, I'll listen as I dine.
I too my friend can tell a piteous story
When I turn'd hero how I purchas'd glory.


WILLIAM:

But Humphrey, sure thou never canst have known
The comforts of a little home thine own:
A home so snug, So chearful too as mine,
'Twas always clean, and we could make it fine;
For there King Charles's golden rules were seen,
And there--God bless 'em both--the King and Queen.
The pewter plates our garnish'd chimney grace
So nicely scour'd, you might have seen your face;
And over all, to frighten thieves, was hung
Well clean'd, altho' but seldom us'd, my gun.
Ah! that damn'd gun! I took it down one morn--
A desperate deal of harm they did my corn!
Our testy Squire too loved to save the breed,
So covey upon covey eat my seed.
I mark'd the mischievous rogues, and took my aim,
I fir'd, they fell, and--up the keeper came.
That cursed morning brought on my undoing,
I went to prison and my farm to ruin.
Poor Mary! for her grave the parish paid,
No tomb-stone tells where her cold corpse is laid!
My children--my dear boys--


HUMPHREY:

Come--Grief is dry--
You to your dinner--to my story I.
To you my friend who happier days have known
And each calm comfort of a home your own,
This is bad living: I have spent my life
In hardest toil and unavailing strife,
And here (from forest ambush safe at least)
To me this scanty pittance seems a feast.
I was a plough-boy once; as free from woes
And blithesome as the lark with whom I rose.
Each evening at return a meal I found
And, tho' my bed was hard, my sleep was sound.
One Whitsuntide, to go to fair, I drest
Like a great bumkin in my Sunday's best;
A primrose posey in my hat I stuck
And to the revel went to try my luck.
From show to show, from booth to booth I stray,
See stare and wonder all the live-long day.
A Serjeant to the fair recruiting came
Skill'd in man-catching to beat up for game;
Our booth he enter'd and sat down by me;--
Methinks even now the very scene I see!
The canvass roof, the hogshead's running store,
The old blind fiddler seated next the door,
The frothy tankard passing to and fro
And the rude rabble round the puppet-show;
The Serjeant eyed me well--the punch-bowl comes,
And as we laugh'd and drank, up struck the drums--
And now he gives a bumper to his Wench--
God save the King, and then--God damn the French.
Then tells the story of his last campaign.
How many wounded and how many slain,
Flags flying, cannons roaring, drums a-beating,
The English marching on, the French retreating,--
"Push on--push on my lads! they fly before ye,
"March on to riches, happiness and glory!"
At first I wonder'd, by degrees grew bolder,
Then cried--"tis a fine thing to be a soldier!"
"Aye Humphrey!" says the Serjeant--"that's your name?
"'Tis a fine thing to fight the French for fame!
"March to the field--knock out a Mounseer's brains
"And pick the scoundrel's pocket for your pains.
"Come Humphrey come! thou art a lad of spirit!
"Rise to a halbert--as I did--by merit!
"Would'st thou believe it? even I was once
"As thou art now, a plough-boy and a dunce;
"But Courage rais'd me to my rank. How now boy!
"Shall Hero Humphrey still be Numps the plough-boy?
"A proper shaped young fellow! tall and straight!
"Why thou wert made for glory! five feet eight!
"The road to riches is the field of fight,--
"Didst ever see a guinea look so bright?
"Why regimentals Numps would give thee grace,
"A hat and feather would become that face;
"The girls would crowd around thee to be kist--
"Dost love a girl?" "Od Zounds!" I cried "I'll list!"
So past the night: anon the morning came,
And off I set a volunteer for fame.
"Back shoulders, turn out your toes, hold up your head,
"Stand easy!" so I did--till almost dead.
Oh how I long'd to tend the plough again
Trudge up the field and whistle o'er the plain,
When tir'd and sore amid the piteous throng
Hungry and cold and wet I limp'd along,
And growing fainter as I pass'd and colder,
Curs'd that ill hour when I became a soldier!
In town I found the hours more gayly pass
And Time fled swiftly with my girl and glass;
The girls were wonderous kind and wonderous fair,
They soon transferred me to the Doctor's care,
The Doctor undertook to cure the evil,
And he almost transferred me to the Devil.
'Twere tedious to relate the dismal story
Of fighting, fasting, wretchedness and glory.
At last discharg'd, to England's shores I came
Paid for my wounds with want instead of fame,
Found my fair friends and plunder'd as they bade me,
They kist me, coax'd me, robb'd me and betray'd me.
Tried and condemn'd his Majesty transports me,
And here in peace, I thank him, he supports me,
So ends my dismal and heroic story
And Humphrey gets more good from guilt than glory.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry