Written by
Sylvia Plath |
Old man, you surface seldom.
Then you come in with the tide's coming
When seas wash cold, foam-
Capped: white hair, white beard, far-flung,
A dragnet, rising, falling, as waves
Crest and trough. Miles long
Extend the radial sheaves
Of your spread hair, in which wrinkling skeins
Knotted, caught, survives
The old myth of orgins
Unimaginable. You float near
As kneeled ice-mountains
Of the north, to be steered clear
Of, not fathomed. All obscurity
Starts with a danger:
Your dangers are many. I
Cannot look much but your form suffers
Some strange injury
And seems to die: so vapors
Ravel to clearness on the dawn sea.
The muddy rumors
Of your burial move me
To half-believe: your reappearance
Proves rumors shallow,
For the archaic trenched lines
Of your grained face shed time in runnels:
Ages beat like rains
On the unbeaten channels
Of the ocean. Such sage humor and
Durance are whirlpools
To make away with the ground-
Work of the earth and the sky's ridgepole.
Waist down, you may wind
One labyrinthine tangle
To root deep among knuckles, shinbones,
Skulls. Inscrutable,
Below shoulders not once
Seen by any man who kept his head,
You defy questions;
You defy godhood.
I walk dry on your kingdom's border
Exiled to no good.
Your shelled bed I remember.
Father, this thick air is murderous.
I would breathe water.
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Written by
A E Housman |
I hoed and trenched and weeded,
And took the flowers to fair:
I brought them home unheeded;
The hue was not the wear.
So up and down I sow them
For lads like me to find,
When I shall lie below them,
A dead man out of mind.
Some seed the birds devour,
And some the season mars,
But here and there will flower,
The solitary stars,
And fields will yearly bear them
As light-leaved spring comes on,
And luckless lads will wear them
When I am dead and gone.
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Written by
Thomas Hardy |
By Corporal Tullidge. See "The Trumpet-Major"
In Memory of S. C. (Pensioner). Died 184-
WE trenched, we trumpeted and drummed,
And from our mortars tons of iron hummed
Ath'art the ditch, the month we bombed
The Town o' Valencie?n.
'Twas in the June o' Ninety-dree
(The Duke o' Yark our then Commander be?n)
The German Legion, Guards, and we
Laid siege to Valencie?n.
This was the first time in the war
That French and English spilled each other's gore;
--God knows what year will end the roar
Begun at Valencie?n!
'Twas said that we'd no business there
A-topper?n the French for disagre?n;
However, that's not my affair--
We were at Valencie?n.
Such snocks and slats, since war began
Never knew raw recruit or veter?n:
Stone-deaf therence went many a man
Who served at Valencie?n.
Into the streets, ath'art the sky,
A hundred thousand balls and bombs were fle?n;
And harmless townsfolk fell to die
Each hour at Valencie?n!
And, sweat?n wi' the bombardiers,
A shell was slent to shards anighst my ears:
--'Twas night the end of hopes and fears
For me at Valencie?n!
They bore my wownded frame to camp,
And shut my gap?n skull, and washed en cle?n,
And jined en wi' a zilver clamp
Thik night at Valencie?n.
"We've fetched en back to quick from dead;
But never more on earth while rose is red
Will drum rouse Corpel!" Doctor said
O' me at Valencie?n.
'Twer true. No voice o' friend or foe
Can reach me now, or any live?n be?n;
And little have I power to know
Since then at Valencie?n!
I never hear the zummer hums
O' bees; and don't know when the cuckoo comes;
But night and day I hear the bombs
We threw at Valencie?n....
As for the Duke o' Yark in war,
There be some volk whose judgment o' en is me?n;
But this I say--'a was not far
From great at Valencie?n.
O' wild wet nights, when all seems sad,
My wownds come back, as though new wownds I'd had;
But yet--at times I'm sort o' glad
I fout at Valencie?n.
Well: Heaven wi' its jasper halls
Is now the on'y Town I care to be in....
Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls
As we did Valencie?n!
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