Download ~ Sorrow of War. Poems * by L. Golding ~ eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Sorrow of War. Poems
- Author : L. Golding
- Release Date : January 09, 2020
- Genre: Poetry,Books,Fiction & Literature,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 3985 KB
Description
DEAD IN GALLIPOLI
He died in Gallipoli.
What English flower
That we cherish shall grow of him?
Never a flower
Shall grow that we know of him!
No white daisy-coverlet
Shall grow from the ground of him;
No English bird-loverlet
Pipe love-songs around of him.
Under the sycamore
His grave not appears,
Where the crocuses flicker more
Than armies with spears.
Under no tree at all
England designed
His body may be at all
Gently consigned.
He died in Gallipoli
The death on a stake.
Gallipoli poison
Is now the great part of him.
A flower like a snake
Shall writhe from the heart of him.
The desolate surf
Below him is muttering.
Over his turf
A bird like a devil
Is flapping and fluttering.
The poisonous bird
Whose scarlet eye glowers,
The poisonous flowers
With petals unclean
Are the only things heard
And the only things seen.
Is that the whole of you,
White lad from England,
Is that the soul of you,
Dead in Gallipoli?
You are dead to me, dead to me,
Barren and far,
But a Thing that was said to me,
By a bird, by a star,
—An old thing of solace,
O stupid it seemed;
And I now cannot tell at all
If the whisper that fell at all
I heard or I dreamed.
It seemed that I caught a
Faint whisper or sign,
Being drunken with water,
Or hallowed with wine.
Ah, would that I knew
What the Word was that came,
What the Thing was that gleamed
With a wind and a flame;
Ah, would that I knew,
Even as you,
O white lad from England,
White lad from England,
Dead in Gallipoli,
Would that I knew
If I heard or I dreamed!
A JOURNEY SOUTH
To the South lands, the green lands, from the
North, the harsh
Rocks, where the eagles whose granite bills
Screech from the scars of toppling hills.
North, the marsh
Hollows which black waste water fills,
—The South green lands!
To the South lands, the green lands, where
the flowers of fruit
Are moons entangled in cosmic trees,
Where birds are rocks in the foam of seas,
The wind's a player, the grass a lute
Whose wires are swept by the wings of bees,
To the South lands, the green lands—but
halt, O hark!
A sob of birds in a poisoned wood!
The fume of poppies crushed foul in mud!
The whine of the wings of Death through the dark!
A sunset of flame, a moon of blood!
—The South red lands!
THE NEW TRADE
In the market-places they have made
A dolorous new trade.
Now you will see in the fierce naphtha-light,
Piled hideously to sight,
Dead limbs of men bronzed in the over-seas,
Bomb-wrenched from elbows and knees;
Torn feet, that would, unwearied by harsh loads,
Have tramped steep moorland roads;
Torn hands that would have moulded exquisitely
Rare things for God to see.
And there are eyes there—blue like blue doves' wings,
Black like the Libyan kings,
Grey as before-dawn rivers, willow-stirred,
Brown as a singing-bird;
But all stare from the dark into the dark,
Reproachful, tense, and stark.
Eyes heaped on trays and in broad baskets there,
Feet, hands, and ropes of hair.
In the market-places ... and women buy ...
... Naphtha glares ... hawkers cry ...
Fat men rub hands....
O God, O just God, send
Plague, lightnings ...
Make an end!