Written by
Siegfried Sassoon |
I’ve never ceased to curse the day I signed
A seven years’ bargain for the Golden Fleece.
’Twas a bad deal all round; and dear enough
It cost me, what with my daft management,
And the mean folk as owed and never paid me,
And backing losers; and the local bucks
Egging me on with whiskys while I bragged
The man I was when huntsman to the Squire.
I’d have been prosperous if I’d took a farm
Of fifty acres, drove my gig and haggled
At Monday markets; now I’ve squandered all
My savings; nigh three hundred pound I got
As testimonial when I’d grown too stiff
And slow to press a beaten fox.
The Fleece!
’Twas the damned Fleece that wore my Emily out,
The wife of thirty years who served me well;
(Not like this beldam clattering in the kitchen,
That never trims a lamp nor sweeps the floor,
And brings me greasy soup in a foul crock.)
Blast the old harridan! What’s fetched her now,
Leaving me in the dark, and short of fire?
And where’s my pipe? ’Tis lucky I’ve a turn
For thinking, and remembering all that’s past.
And now’s my hour, before I hobble to bed,
To set the works a-wheezing, wind the clock
That keeps the time of life with feeble tick
Behind my bleared old face that stares and wonders.
. . . .
It’s ***** how, in the dark, comes back to mind
Some morning of September. We’ve been digging
In a steep sandy warren, riddled with holes,
And I’ve just pulled the terrier out and left
A sharp-nosed cub-face blinking there and snapping,
Then in a moment seen him mobbed and torn
To strips in the baying hurly of the pack.
I picture it so clear: the dusty sunshine
On bracken, and the men with spades, that wipe
Red faces: one tilts up a mug of ale.
And, having stopped to clean my gory hands,
I whistle the jostling beauties out of the wood.
I’m but a daft old fool! I often wish
The Squire were back again—ah! he was a man!
They don’t breed men like him these days; he’d come
For sure, and sit and talk and suck his briar
Till the old wife brings up a dish of tea.
Ay, those were days, when I was serving Squire!
I never knowed such sport as ’85,
The winter afore the one that snowed us silly.
. . . .
Once in a way the parson will drop in
And read a bit o’ the Bible, if I’m bad,
And pray the Lord to make my spirit whole
In faith: he leaves some ’baccy on the shelf,
And wonders I don’t keep a dog to cheer me
Because he knows I’m mortal fond of dogs!
I ask you, what’s a gent like that to me
As wouldn’t know Elijah if I saw him,
Nor have the wit to keep him on the talk?
’Tis kind of parson to be troubling still
With such as me; but he’s a town-bred chap,
Full of his college notions and Christmas hymns.
Religion beats me. I’m amazed at folk
Drinking the gospels in and never scratching
Their heads for questions. When I was a lad
I learned a bit from mother, and never thought
To educate myself for prayers and psalms.
But now I’m old and bald and serious-minded,
With days to sit and ponder. I’d no chance
When young and gay to get the hang of all
This Hell and Heaven: and when the clergy hoick
And holloa from their pulpits, I’m asleep,
However hard I listen; and when they pray
It seems we’re all like children sucking sweets
In school, and wondering whether master sees.
I used to dream of Hell when I was first
Promoted to a huntsman’s job, and scent
Was rotten, and all the foxes disappeared,
And hounds were short of blood; and officers
From barracks over-rode ’em all day long
On weedy, whistling nags that knocked a hole
In every fence; good sportsmen to a man
And brigadiers by now, but dreadful hard
On a young huntsman keen to show some sport.
Ay, Hell was thick with captains, and I rode
The lumbering brute that’s beat in half a mile,
And blunders into every blind old ditch.
Hell was the coldest scenting land I’ve known,
And both my whips were always lost, and hounds
Would never get their heads down; and a man
On a great yawing chestnut trying to cast ’em
While I was in a corner pounded by
The ugliest hog-backed stile you’ve clapped your eyes on.
There was an iron-spiked fence round all the coverts,
And civil-spoken keepers I couldn’t trust,
And the main earth unstopp’d. The fox I found
Was always a three-legged ’un from a bag,
Who reeked of aniseed and wouldn’t run.
The farmers were all ploughing their old pasture
And bellowing at me when I rode their beans
To cast for beaten fox, or galloped on
With hounds to a lucky view. I’d lost my voice
Although I shouted fit to burst my guts,
And couldn’t blow my horn.
And when I woke,
Emily snored, and barn-cocks started crowing,
And morn was at the window; and I was glad
To be alive because I heard the cry
Of hounds like church-bells chiming on a Sunday.
Ay, that’s the song I’d wish to hear in Heaven!
The cry of hounds was Heaven for me: I know
Parson would call me crazed and wrong to say it,
But where’s the use of life and being glad
If God’s not in your gladness?
I’ve no brains
For book-learned studies; but I’ve heard men say
There’s much in print that clergy have to wink at:
Though many I’ve met were jolly chaps, and rode
To hounds, and walked me puppies; and could pick
Good legs and loins and necks and shoulders, ay,
And feet—’twas necks and feet I looked at first.
Some hounds I’ve known were wise as half your saints,
And better hunters. That old dog of the Duke’s,
Harlequin; what a dog he was to draw!
And what a note he had, and what a nose
When foxes ran down wind and scent was catchy!
And that light lemon ***** of the Squire’s, old Dorcas—
She were a marvellous hunter, were old Dorcas!
Ay, oft I’ve thought, ‘If there were hounds in Heaven,
With God as master, taking no subscription;
And all His bless?d country farmed by tenants,
And a straight-necked old fox in every gorse!’
But when I came to work it out, I found
There’d be too many huntsmen wanting places,
Though some I’ve known might get a job with Nick!
. . . .
I’ve come to think of God as something like
The figure of a man the old Duke was
When I was turning hounds to Nimrod King,
Before his Grace was took so bad with gout
And had to quit the saddle. Tall and spare,
Clean-shaved and grey, with shrewd, kind eyes, that twinkled,
And easy walk; who, when he gave good words,
Gave them whole-hearted; and would never blame
Without just cause. Lord God might be like that,
Sitting alone in a great room of books
Some evening after hunting.
Now I’m tired
With hearkening to the tick-tack on the shelf;
And pondering makes me doubtful.
Riding home
On a moonless night of cloud that feels like frost
Though stars are hidden (hold your feet up, horse!)
And thinking what a task I had to draw
A pack with all those lame ’uns, and the lot
Wanting a rest from all this open weather;
That’s what I’m doing now.
And likely, too,
The frost’ll be a long ’un, and the night
One sleep. The parsons say we’ll wake to find
A country blinding-white with dazzle of snow.
The naked stars make men feel lonely, wheeling
And glinting on the puddles in the road.
And then you listen to the wind, and wonder
If folk are quite such bucks as they appear
When dressed by London tailors, looking down
Their boots at covert side, and thinking big.
. . . .
This world’s a funny place to live in. Soon
I’ll need to change my country; but I know
’Tis little enough I’ve understood my life,
And a power of sights I’ve missed, and foreign marvels.
I used to feel it, riding on spring days
In meadows pied with sun and chasing clouds,
And half forget how I was there to catch
The foxes; lose the angry, eager feeling
A huntsman ought to have, that’s out for blood,
And means his hounds to get it!
Now I know
It’s God that speaks to us when we’re bewitched,
Smelling the hay in June and smiling quiet;
Or when there’s been a spell of summer drought,
Lying awake and listening to the rain.
. . . .
I’d like to be the simpleton I was
In the old days when I was whipping-in
To a little harrier-pack in Worcestershire,
And loved a dairymaid, but never knew it
Until she’d wed another. So I’ve loved
My life; and when the good years are gone down,
Discover what I’ve lost.
I never broke
Out of my blundering self into the world,
But let it all go past me, like a man
Half asleep in a land that’s full of wars.
What a grand thing ’twould be if I could go
Back to the kennels now and take my hounds
For summer exercise; be riding out
With forty couple when the quiet skies
Are streaked with sunrise, and the silly birds
Grown hoarse with singing; cobwebs on the furze
Up on the hill, and all the country strange,
With no one stirring; and the horses fresh,
Sniffing the air I’ll never breathe again.
. . . .
You’ve brought the lamp, then, Martha? I’ve no mind
For newspaper to-night, nor bread and cheese.
Give me the candle, and I’ll get to bed.
|
Written by
Walt Whitman |
OF Public Opinion;
Of a calm and cool fiat, sooner or later, (How impassive! How certain and final!)
Of the President with pale face, asking secretly to himself, What will the people say
at
last?
Of the frivolous Judge—Of the corrupt Congressman, Governor, Mayor—Of such as
these,
standing helpless and exposed;
Of the mumbling and screaming priest—(soon, soon deserted;)
Of the lessening, year by year, of venerableness, and of the dicta of officers, statutes,
pulpits, schools;
Of the rising forever taller and stronger and broader, of the intuitions of men and women,
and
of self-esteem, and of personality;
—Of the New World—Of the Democracies, resplendent, en-masse;
Of the conformity of politics, armies, navies, to them and to me,
Of the shining sun by them—Of the inherent light, greater than the rest,
Of the envelopment of all by them, and of the effusion of all from them.
|
Written by
Omer Tarin |
I. You are not dead
Why do they call you
Mohen-jo-daro,
“ Mounds-of-the-Dead”?
You are not dead!
You have never been dead
Or buried
Or cremated
By the scorching banks of the Sindhu;
Historians have conspired against you
A thousand and one tales
Have besmirched your name
Misguided fools have imagined
Your obituary to be true;
Sentimental fools have sung elegies
By their own graves
Garlanded their own biers,
Cursed the stars and howled at the heavens
Self-piteous tears, in the hope
That some part of their practiced grief would be remembered
As poetry,
A fitting tribute to your eternal face;
Maybe, they would be able to, by their ululations,
Raise demons from the earth
Or bring forth spectres
From darkest shadows of the thinnest air, precipitating
Some prophecy, nameless and foreboding, a small
Tin medal on their pathetic breasts,
Stark in their hunger for inspired flights;
Other dust should fashion other jars, not having the consistency
Of ours.
It has been foretold that you will not die
That you will not die thus, at the behest of historians
Or for the research of archaeologists
Or even the yapping lap-dogs
Aping the tawny shades of our leonine skins;
It has been foretold,
And we are witnesses to you survival.
II. Priest-Kings and dancing girls
The sands have shifted,
As the river has---
You are only abandoned,
“Mound-abandoned-and-shifted”.
Take heart! Be not sad,
The sons of Sindhu are around you;
You cannot die while your sons live,
While the children of the river still ply their wide boats
On your consort’s undulating breast;
While your daughters carry their vessels
Fashioned from your clay;
In every face, you are alive.
In the mien of priest-kings who have renounced
Their crowns and pulpits for lives of love and freedom—
At Bhit Shah, they sing your songs;
At Sehwan, they celebrate your being;
In every prayer and call to prayer you are revealed
Rising gradually towards the heights of Kirthar
Rolling ceaselessly over the sands of Kutch
With every partridge crooning in the cotton,
With every mallard winging over Manchar,
You come forth—
The Breaker-of-the-Shackles-of-Tyranny
The-Keeper-of-the-Honour-of-Dancing –girls
Friend-of-the-Imprisoned-Hari
Last-Flower-amidst-the-Thorns-of-Despair!
You are the yellow turmeric staining the red ajrak
Of our wounds
Anointing your martyrs
Healing your casualties
Soothing us with your whispered lullaby
Such as our mothers used to sing us
In our cradles
From the earliest dawn of creation;
Even now, your humped oxen plod home in the evening
Of their tillage;
Every day I hear the rise and fall of your undeciphered script
In the cadences of children
In the chattering of women
In the murmur of lovers
In the gestures of old men
In the anger of the young.
III. A Dream Untold
It was said, long ago, that you will not die
That forever you will live in the eyes of every child,
That you will rise from your gargantuan sleep,
Arise, woken by the winds!
When the Eastern Gates of your citadel are opened wide
All wars will cease
Your sons will no longer flinch under the lash,
Your daughters will no longer be distraught,
The pillars of fire and smoke will settle down
And the silent waste-lands speak with voices of prophecy;
When precious stones will once again etch the bright circumference
Of your ruins
And the heavens shake themselves into fleeting shapes,
Vain and irresolute constellations plunge
Into narrow circles of despair—
It has been said that you will flourish again,
When the crashing shores
Of sea and river
Melt into each other
When waves shiver
Into the rock’s embrace.
Then I, too, shall awaken, I trust,
And behold you in your truth.
------------
* (c) Omer Tarin. Pub ''The Glasgow Seeker'', UK, 2005
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