Tag: Henry Newbolt

Messmates by Henry Newbolt

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Henry Newbolt’s naval poems of the late nineteenth century often tend to be rousing ballads that celebrate Britain’s naval history. They tell tales of great admirals and famous battles of the past. Messmates is a bit different though, closer to Kipling perhaps in its concentration on the ordinary seaman and rather sadder in tone.

A word about the maritime language used here. “Watch” is roughly equivalent to “shift”, the division of time on board ship. But it also means the team to which a sailor is allocated, so keeping a “lone watch” emphasises the isolation of the man who has died and been buried at sea. And on a sailing ship, the mess was the area in which a group of men lived, ate and slept, so a messmate was a member of a close-knit team.

The page layout and spacing is Newbolt’s own and I have taken it directly from Collected Poems 1897–1907.

Messmates by Henry Newbolt

He gave us all a good-bye cheerily
   At the first dawn of day;
We dropped him down the side full
      drearily
When the light died away.
It’s a dead dark watch that he’s
      a-keeping there,
And a long, long night that lags
      a-creeping there,
Where the Trades and the tides roll
      over him
   And the great ships go by.

He’s there alone with green seas
      rocking him
   For a thousand miles round;
He’s there alone with dumb things
      mocking him,
And we’re homeward bound.
It’s a long, lone watch that he’s
      a-keeping there,
And a dead cold night that lags
      a-creeping there
While the months and the years
      roll over him
   And the great ships go by.

I wonder if the tramps come near
      enough
   As they thrash to and fro,
And the battle-ships’ bells ring clear
      enough
   To be heard down below;
If through all the lone watch that
      he’s a-keeping there,
And the long, cold night that lags
      a-creeping there,
The voices of the sailor-men shall
      comfort him
   When the great ships go by.

Against Oblivion by Henry Newbolt

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Henry Newbolt (1862–1938) is best remembered today for his patriotic ballads of British naval history that were very popular in the years before the first world war. His later poems, such as The Nightjar, are quite different in tone, more personal and reflective, but they have been completely overshadowed by the earlier ones, which is a great pity, I think.

I wrote in a post about Thomas Hardy’s poem At Castle Boterel that the lockdowns had affected my sense of time, with the past becoming as vivid to me as the present. Perhaps it is simply a question of having much more time to think than usual. The short poem below is therefore another one that seems quite appropriate at the moment.

Newbolt may well have been thinking about Dunwich in East Anglia. A once thriving community was reduced to the size of a small village by coastal erosion, with the greater part of the town being lost to the sea. The story goes that the church survived intact under the water, complete with its bells, that can still be heard on land when conditions are right.

It makes a wonderfully appropriate metaphor for the process of recovering memories long forgotten. Newbolt contemplates the remembrance of things past, rather like Proust. Who’d have thought it?


Against Oblivion by Henry Newbolt

Cities drowned in olden time
Keep, they say, a magic chime
Rolling up from far below
When the moon-led waters flow.

So within me, ocean deep,
Lies a sunken world asleep.
Lest its bells forget to ring,
Memory! set the tide a-swing!

The Fighting Téméraire by Henry Newbolt

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To mark the appearance of Turner’s The Fighting Téméraire on the reverse of the £20 note, here is Henry Newbolt’s poem of the same title. The last verse captures in words the scene that Turner recorded in oils. (A linstock, by the way, is a staff that holds the match used to fire a cannon; it allowed the gunner to do so from a safe distance.)

 

It was eight bells ringing,
For the morning watch was done,
And the gunner’s lads were singing
As they polished every gun.
It was eight bells ringing,
And the gunner’s lads were singing,
For the ship she rode a-swinging,
As they polished every gun.

Oh! to see the linstock lighting,
Téméraire! Téméraire!
Oh! to hear the round shot biting,
Téméraire! Téméraire!
Oh! to see the linstock lighting,
And to hear the round shot biting,
For we’re all in love with fighting
On the fighting Téméraire.

It was noontide ringing,
And the battle just begun,
When the ship her way was winging,
As they loaded every gun.
It was noontide ringing,
When the ship her way was winging,
And the gunner’s lads were singing
As they loaded every gun.

There’ll be many grim and gory,
Téméraire! Téméraire!
There’ll be few to tell the story,
Téméraire! Téméraire!
There’ll be many grim and gory,
There’ll be few to tell the story,
But we’ll all be one in glory
With the Fighting Téméraire.

There’s a far bell ringing
At the setting of the sun,
And a phantom voice is singing
Of the great days done.
There’s a far bell ringing,
And a phantom voice is singing
Of renown for ever clinging
To the great days done.

Now the sunset breezes shiver,
Téméraire! Téméraire!
And she’s fading down the river,
Téméraire! Téméraire!
Now the sunset’s breezes shiver,
And she’s fading down the river,
But in England’s song for ever
She’s the Fighting Téméraire.

The Nightjar by Henry Newbolt

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It’s almost time for the nightjars, those most elusive and mysterious of birds, to be on their way after their fleeting summer visit to these shores.

Here is Henry Newbolt’s poem, The Nightjar, written towards the end of his life, 1936 I think. It’s a bit different to the earlier poems he is most remembered for today, Vitaï Lampada (Play up! play up! and play the game!) and Drake’s Drum.

No opinion or analysis this time, just a poem that I like. Walter de la Mare regarded it highly and wished that Newbolt had written more in the same vein. I found it in an anthology compiled by Kingsley Amis. I believe John Betjeman liked it too. See what you make of it.

The Nightjar

We loved our nightjar, but she would not stay with us.
We had found her lying as dead, but soft and warm,
Under the apple tree beside the old thatched wall.
Two days we kept her in a blanket by the fire,
Fed her, and thought she might well live – till suddenly
In the very moment of most confiding hope
She raised herself all tense, quivered and drooped and died.
Tears sprang into my eyes – why not? The heart of man
Soon sets itself to love a living companion,
The more so if by chance it asks some care of him.
And this one had the kind of loveliness that goes
Far deeper than the optic nerve – full fathom five
To the soul’s ocean cave, where Wonder and Reason
Tell their alternate dreams of how the world was made.
So wonderful she was – her wings the wings of night
But powdered here and there with tiny golden clouds
And wave-line markings like sea-ripples on the sand.
O how I wish I might never forget that bird –
Never!
But even now, like all beauty of earth,
She is fading from me into the dusk of Time.