Thread: Poetry? Maybe it isn't all arty farty bull?

Tennyson's "The Revenge; a Ballad of the Fleet" is a good one.

You can find it here:
http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachin...4-tenneson.cfm

It deals with the loss of a ship and its seaman in an altogether more warry way!

When I Go

Place me not beneath mother earth’s soil,
Dig no more trenches for me,
Entomb me not behind some brass plate,
For time to tarnish and neglect.

I still feel the cold winds of the south,
That makes my body ache, yes even now.
So roast my bones quickly,
Let the flames purge my soul.

Scatter my ashes high upon a hill,
Like my fathers before me.
Let the wind take my earthly remnants,
As I return one last time,
To the land of my birth.

James Love

Originally Posted by Biscuits_AB

On yonder hill..
there stood a coo..
it must have moved,
'cos it's no there noo.

thats the farmer's version of

On yonder hill
there stood a bucket,
it's no' there now
some feker took it

Originally Posted by Ord_Sgt

Originally Posted by Biscuits_AB

On yonder hill..
there stood a coo..
it must have moved,
'cos it's no there noo.

Thanks for that. We all love you for your feeling and considerate contribution. CNUT!!

As long as it's pished you off, that's a bonus in my books.

I posted this last year, in the "War Poetry..." thread on "Now That's what I Call ARRSE 1".
Apols, because I can't work out how to link directly to it. It's on Page 17, about half way down. Mind you, if you have the time, the whole thread is worth reading.
The poem still raises hairs......

"I first read the following poem about 10 years ago. It still raises the hair on the back of my neck each time I re-read it.


What are you guarding, Man-at-Arms?
Why do you watch and wait?
'I guard the graves,' said the Man-at-Arms,
'I guard the graves by Flanders farms
Where the dead will rise at my call to arms,
And march to the Menin gate'.

'When do they march then, Man-at-Arms?
Cold is the hour - and late'
'They march tonight' said the Man-at-Arms,
With the moon on the Menin gate.
They march when the midnight bids them go.
With their rifles slung and their pipes aglow,
Along the roads, the roads they know,
The roads to the Menin gate.

'What are they singing, Man-at-Arms,
As they march to the Menin gate?'
'The Marching songs', said the Man-at-Arms,
That let them laugh at fate.
No more will the night be cold for them,
For the last tattoo has rolled for them,
And their souls will sing as of old for them,
As they march to the Menin gate."

And then there is this excellent WW1 poem by Gilbert Frankau:

HOW RIFLEMAN BROWN CAME TO VALHALLA


To the lower Hall of Valhalla, to the heroes of no renown,
Relieved from his spell at the listening-post, came Rifleman Joseph Brown.
With never a rent in his khaki nor smear of blood on his face,
He flung his pack from his shoulders, and made for an empty place.

The Killer-men of Valhalla looked up from the banquet-board
At the unfouled breech of his rifle, at the unfleshed point of his sword;
And the unsung dead of the trenches, the kings who have never a crown,
Demanded his pass to Valhalla from Rifleman Joseph Brown.

"Who comes, unhit, to the party?" A one-legged Corporal spoke,
And the gashed heads nodded approval through the rings of the Endless Smoke:
"Who comes for the beer and the Woodbines of the never-closed Canteen,
With the barrack-shine on his bayonet and a full-charged magazine?"

Then Rifleman Brown looked round him at the nameless men of the Line -
At the wounds of the shell and the bullet, at the burns of the bomb and mine;
At the tunics, virgin of medals but crimson-clotted with blood,
At the ankle boots and the puttees, caked stiff with the Flanders mud;
At the myriad short Lee-Enfields that crowded the rifle-rack,
Each with its blade to the sword-boss brown, and its muzzle powder-black:

And Rifleman Brown said never a word; yet he felt in the soul of his soul
His right to the beer of the lower Hall, though he came to drink of it, whole;
His right to the fags of the free Canteen, to a seat at the banquet-board,
Though he came to the men who had killed their man, with never a man to his sword.

"Who speaks for the stranger Rifleman, O boys of the free Canteen?
Who passes the chap with the unmaimed limbs and the kit that is far too clean?"
The gashed heads eyed him above their beers, the gashed lips sucked at their smoke:
There were three at the board of his own platoon, but not a man of them spoke.

His mouth was made for the tankard froth and the biting whiff of a fag,
But he knew that he might not speak for himself to the dead men who do not brag.
A gun-butt crashed on the gateway, a man came staggering in;
His head was cleft with a great red wound from the temple-bone to the chin,
His blade was dyed to the bayonet-boss with the clots that were scarcely dry;
And he cried to the men who had killed their man:
"Who passes the Rifleman? I!
By the four I slew, by the shell I stopped, if my feet be not too late,
I speak the word for Rifleman Brown that a chap may speak for his mate."

The dead of lower Valhalla, the heroes of dumb renown,
They pricked their ears to a tale of the earth as they set their tankards down.



"My mate was on sentry this evening when the General happened along
And asked what he'd do in a gas-attack,. Joe told him:
'Beat the gong.'
'What else?'
'Open fire, Sir,' Joe answered.
'Good God, man,' our General said,
'By the time you'd beaten that bloodstained gong the chances are you'd be dead.
Just think, lad.' 'Gas helmet, of course, Sir.' 'Yes, damn it, and gas helmet first.'
So Joe stood dumb to attention, and wondered why he'd been cursed."

The gashed heads turned to the Rifleman, and now it seemed that they knew
Why the face that had never a smear of blood was stained to the jawbones, blue.
"He was posted again at midnight." The scarred heads craned to the voice,
As the man with the blood-red bayonet spoke up for the mate of his choice.
"You know what it's like in a listening-post, the Very candles aflare,
Their bullets smacking the sand-bags, our Vickers combing your hair,
How your ears and your eyes get jumpy, till each known tuft that you scan
Moves and crawls in the shadows till you'd almost swear it was man;
You know how you peer and snuff at the night when the North-East gas-winds blow."
"By the One who made us and maimed us" quoth lower Valhalla "we know!"

"Sudden, out of the blackness, sudden as Hell, there came
Roar and rattle of rifles, spurts of machine-gun flame;
And Joe stood up in the forward sap to try and get on to the game.
Sudden, their shells come screaming; sudden, his nostrils sniff
The sickening reek of the rotten pears, the death that kills with a whiff.
Death! and he knows it certain, as he bangs on his cartridge-case,
With the gas-cloud's claws at his windpipe and the gas cloud's wings on his face . . .
We heard his gong in our dug-out, he only whacked on it twice,
We whipped our gas-bags over our heads, and manned the step in a trice -
For the cloud would have caught us as sure as Fate if he'd taken the Staff's advice."

His head was cleft with a great red wound from the chin to the temple-bone,
But his voice was clear as a sounding gong, "I'll be damned if I'll drink alone,
Not even in lower Valhalla! Is he free of your free Canteen,
My mate who comes with the unfleshed point and the full-charged magazine?"

The gashed heads rose at the Rifleman o'er the rings of the Endless Smoke,
And loud as the roar of a thousand guns Valhalla's answer broke,
And loud as the crash of a thousand shells their tankards clashed on the board:
"He is free of the mess of the Killer-men, your mate of the unfleshed sword;
For we know the worth of his deed on earth; as we know the speed of the death
Which catches its man by the back of the throat and gives him water for breath;
As we know how the hand at the helmet-cloth may tarry seconds too long,
When the very life of the front-line trench is staked on the beat of a gong.
By the four you slew, by the case he smote, by the gray gas-cloud and the green,
We pass your mate for the Endless Smoke and the beer of the free Canteen."

In the lower hall of Valhalla, with the heroes of no renown,
With our nameless dead of the Marne and the Aisne, of Mons, and of Wipers town,
With the men who killed ere they died for us, sits Rifleman Joseph Brown.

We started with Chesterton (GK not JK), I can recommend his novel "The man who was Thursday", which is still bang up to date. Poem "Lepanto" also current.

One of my favourites is Kipling's "The glory of the garden" which starts:

OUR England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.
For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,
You'll find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dung-pits and the tanks,
The rollers, carts, and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks

It is allegorical and makes the point that the glory of England has only been achieved by the hard work of its citizens (the gardeners); a lesson for today

It contains the great lines:

Now Adam was a garderner and the God that made him sees
That all a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees

Originally Posted by _Artemis_

ALL of Eliot's The Wasteland is gold but I'd have to quote the whole thing to demonstrate the landscape he creates.

Gotta try a bit of Byron (how can anyone not love a poem entitled "The Destruction of Sennacherib"?) just for the metre:

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Plath:

If I've killed one man, I've killed two ----





The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

(The problem is that quoting one verse just doesn't do her justice.)

And this one which in many ways says it all:

Rossetti:

Remeber me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Re : The Wasteland, I did a seminar paper on it a few years ago, let me know if you fancy a read, it was kind of a "this is my interpretation" of what It means etc

This poem brings a lump to my throat,I can really feel all the emotion in it.



The Soldier
Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

The Soldier
Rupert Brooke

The sun sets on land of war and grime,
And hopes to raise on more peaceful time,
Mountains lined with skies of red,
To honour those who fought and bled.

Winding roads through towns so bare,
Children crying but you can't care,
Stare at you, eyes filled with hate,
They've died inside, they know their fate.

A fate that none should need endure,
A loss of innocence in nation once were pure,
To see your loved ones, children killed,
And desire to have revenge fulfilled.

A fight that's fuelled with grief and pain,
Eye for an eye for those been slain,
Who pulled the trigger, who shot the shell?
Wasting lives wont stop this hell.

So make the sun shine through the rain,
We wont be needed here again.

feu-de-joie - I stand corrected. I my defence my drink was doing the spelling that night. Thnks also to biscuits-ab, that made me giggle like an idiot. We can't keep serious too long. This website still amazes me, that we can get a thread like this coexisting next to one about whether Helen Mirren would get it (oh god yes) or another one about procurement processes. Good stuff.

How about some Dylan Thomas?

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The finger joints are cramped with chalk;
A goose's quill has put an end to murder
That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand that holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor stroke the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.

And I put this one here with no trace of irony, I do actually admire this one:

There are children standing here,
Arms outstretched into the sky,
Tears drying on their face.
He has been here.
Brothers lie in shallow graves.
Fathers lost without a trace.
A nation blind to their disgrace,
Since he's been here.

And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness.

Houses burnt beyond repair.
The smell of death is in the air.
A woman weeping in despair says,
He has been here.
Tracer lighting up the sky.
It's another families' turn to die.
A child afraid to even cry out says,
He has been here.

And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness.

There are children standing here,
Arms outstretched into the sky,
But no one asks the question why,
He has been here.
Old men kneel and accept their fate.
Wives and daughters cut and raped.
A generation drenched in hate.
Yes, he has been here.

And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness.

Got two i remember - this one for when some little somone is worrying about their career and being an arse:

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptorwell those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear --

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.'



And this one for when I wonder about things and have been drinking:

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An Angel writing in a book of gold:


Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?" The Vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."


"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one who loves his fellow men."


The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And shoed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!

Originally Posted by dpcw

And, lo! AbouBen Adhem's name led all the rest!

Alphabetical Order-does exactly what it says on the tin :D

Originally Posted by firestarter

Originally Posted by dpcw

And, lo! AbouBen Adhem's name led all the rest!

Alphabetical Order-does exactly what it says on the tin :D

Nice one - never saw that before