Tag: Poem

Battle of Britain by C Day Lewis

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

DSCF3223 (2)

The skies over South East England have been quieter and emptier than we are used to of late. Eighty years ago they were full of warplanes as the Battle of Britain began.

This poem was written in 1970 by the then poet laureate, Cecil Day Lewis, for the thirtieth anniversary.

The big-budget cinematic re-enactment of the battle was released around that time, and if my memory is correct, this poem was printed in the programme for the film.

I like the way the narrator of the poem is a witness to the real events, speaking to someone younger for whom they are history. It deserves to be better known, I think.

 

Battle of Britain by C Day Lewis

What did we earth-bound make of it? A tangle
Of vapour trails, a vertiginously high
Swarming of midges, at most a fiery angel
Hurled out of heaven, was all we could descry.

How could we know the agony and pride
That scrawled those fading signatures up there,
And the cool expertise of those who died
Or lived through that delirium of the air?

Grounded on history now, we re-enact
Such lives, such deaths. Time, laughing out of court
The newspaper heroics and the faked
Statistics, leaves us only to record

What was, what might have been: fighter and bomber,
The tilting sky, tense moves and counterings;
Those who outlived that legendary summer;
Those who went down, its sunlight on their wings.

And you, unborn then, what will you make of it—
This shadow-play of battles long ago?
Be sure of this: they pushed to the uttermost limit
Their luck, skill, nerve. And they were young like you.

 

 

 

Ha’nacker Mill by Hilaire Belloc

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

I knew who Belloc was, but I did not know much about him. One of the giants of Edwardian writing and friend of G K Chesterton. I was familiar with Cautionary Tales for Children, of course, perhaps his most famous work today. And then there is that poem The South Country, with its repeated references to “the men who were boys when I was a boy”.

But it wasn’t until I saw a television programme about writers in Sussex that I began to realise the depth of Belloc’s attachment to the Sussex countryside over many years.

That led me to the poem below, from 1923. The ruined windmill and the desolate field suggest the end of a rural way of life that was coming to a close at that time. It’s a lament, really, and a poem that needs to be heard to get the full effect.

 

Ha’nacker Mill by Hilaire Belloc 

Sally is gone that was so kindly,
Sally is gone from Ha’nacker Hill.
And the Briar grows ever since then so blindly
And ever since then the clapper is still. . .
And the sweeps have fallen from Ha’nacker Mill.

Ha’nacker Hill is in Desolation:
Ruin a-top and a field unploughed.
And Spirits that call on a fallen nation,
Spirits that loved her calling aloud,
Spirits abroad in a windy cloud.

Spirits that call and no one answers;
Ha’nacker’s down and England’s done.
Wind and Thistle for pipe and dancers,
And never a ploughman under the Sun.
Never a ploughman. Never a one.

 

 

 

The Belfry by Laurence Binyon

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

Like most people, I suppose, I knew Laurence Binyon for the famous lines from his 1914 poem For the Fallen: “They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old/Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn/At the going down of the sun and in the morning/We will remember them.”

The poem below is in a rather different vein and is completely new to me. I found it in Walter de la Mare’s wonderful anthology Come Hither, which has been a source of inspiration to me for some time now, as it’s full of exactly the sort of poetry I like. The Belfry is rather reminiscent of the style of de la Mare’s own poetry, I feel. It really comes to life if you read it aloud. I don’t know exactly when it was written.

I think it also appeals to me, partly because I too had the childhood experience of climbing up inside an ancient church tower.

 

The Belfry

Dark is the stair, and humid the old walls
Wherein it winds, on worn stones, up the tower.
Only by loophole chinks at intervals
Pierces the late glow of this August hour.

Two truant children climb the stairway dark,
With joined hands, half in glee and half in fear,
The boy mounts brisk, the girl hangs back to hark
If the gruff sexton their light footstep hear.

Dazzled at last they gain the belfry-room.
Barred rays through shutters hover across the floor
Dancing in dust; so fresh they come from gloom
That breathless they pause wondering at the door.

How hushed it is! What smell of timbers old
From cobwebbed beams! The warm light here and there
Edging a darkness, sleeps in pools of gold,
Or weaves fantastic shadows through the air.

How motionless the huge bell! Straight and stiff,
Ropes through the floor rise to the rafters dim.
The shadowy round of metal hangs, as if
No force could ever lift its gleamy rim.

A child’s awe, a child’s wonder, who shall trace
What dumb thoughts on its waxen softness write
In such a spell-brimmed, time-forgotten place,
Bright in that strangeness of approaching night?

As these two gaze, their fingers tighter press;
For suddenly the slow bell upward heaves
Its vast mouth, the cords quiver at the stress,
And ere the heart prepare, the ear receives

Full on its delicate sense the plangent stroke
Of violent, iron, reverberating sound.
As if the tower in all its stones awoke,
Deep echoes tremble, again in clangour drowned,

That starts without a whir of frighted wings
And holds these young hearts shaken, hushed, and thrilled,
Like frail reeds in a rushing stream, like strings
Of music, or like trees with tempest filled,

And rolls in wide waves out o’er the lone land,
Tone following tone toward the far-setting sun,
Till where in fields long-shadowed reapers stand
Bowed heads look up, and lo, the day is done. . . .

 

 

 

The Coombe by Edward Thomas

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

I don’t know what brought this one to mind again; perhaps walking in the woods, as I have done so often recently, listening to the birds singing. It’s one of Edward Thomas’ earliest poems, from 1914, I believe.

 

The Coombe

The Combe was ever dark, ancient and dark.
Its mouth is stopped with bramble, thorn, and briar;
And no one scrambles over the sliding chalk
By beech and yew and perishing juniper
Down the half precipices of its sides, with roots
And rabbit holes for steps. The sun of Winter,
The moon of Summer, and all the singing birds
Except the missel-thrush that loves juniper,
Are quite shut out. But far more ancient and dark
The Combe looks since they killed the badger there,
Dug him out and gave him to the hounds,
That most ancient Briton of English beasts.

 

The Way Through the Woods by Rudyard Kipling

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

 

DSCF3190 (2)

 

I’m lucky enough to live within ten minutes’ walk of some woods that I’ve known since I was a boy. It’s been a life saver to be able to go there during the lockdown. The place has been transformed, with no planes overhead and much less traffic noise.

Everything smells fresh and the birds all sing at the same time so it’s hard to tell the calls apart. Today we went a little further off the beaten track and surprised a bird in a hole in a tree trunk.

So many trees have grown up since I first knew the place. It’s a nature reserve now and allowed to run wild. It’s hard to pick out the features I knew so long ago and the paths seem to lead in different directions from how I remember them. I found the sunken field with a concrete retaining wall, where they used to race bicycles. It’s completely overgrown now.

As I wander the paths, trying to orientate myself, the opening words of Kipling’s poem come into my mind.

 

The Way Through the Woods

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.

 

 

 

A Wet Night by Thomas Hardy

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

In these difficult times, here is a timely poetic reminder from Thomas Hardy, that those who came before us had to endure far worse and did so with stoicism.

 

I pace along, the rain-shafts riddling me,
Mile after mile out by the moorland way,
And up the hill, and through the ewe-leaze gray
Into the lane, and round the corner tree;

Where, as my clothing clams me, mire-bestarred,
And the enfeebled light dies out of day,
Leaving the liquid shades to reign, I say,
“This is a hardship to be calendared!”

Yet sires of mine now perished and forgot,
When worse beset, ere roads were shapen here,
And night and storm were foes indeed to fear,
Times numberless have trudged across this spot
In sturdy muteness on their strenuous lot,
And taking all such toils as trifles mere.

 

 

The Fighting Téméraire by Henry Newbolt

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

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.

Weathers by Thomas Hardy

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

I had been planning to post a favourite poem of mine, “Snow in the Suburbs” by Thomas Hardy, with a photo to match. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look as if there is going to be any snow in my neighbourhood this winter. Despite the wind and rain, we are heading towards spring. So, instead of a winter poem, here is another one by Hardy that contrasts spring and autumn.

 

Weathers

This is the weather the cuckoo likes,
And so do I;
When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,
And nestlings fly;
And the little brown nightingale bills his best,
And they sit outside at ‘The Traveller’s Rest,’
And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest,
And citizens dream of the south and west,
And so do I.

This is the weather the shepherd shuns,
And so do I;
When beeches drip in browns and duns,
And thresh and ply;
And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe,
And meadow rivulets overflow,
And drops on gate bars hang in a row,
And rooks in families homeward go,
And so do I.

The Lamplighter by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

I was amazed when I found out that there are actually still gaslights in London. So on National Poetry Day, here is a picture of one of them to go with Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem.

DSCN0047 (2)

My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky.
It’s time to take the window to see Leerie going by;
For every night at teatime and before you take your seat,
With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.

Now Tom would be a driver and Maria go to sea,
And my papa’s a banker and as rich as he can be;
But I, when I am stronger and can choose what I’m to do,
O Leerie, I’ll go round at night and light the lamps with you!

For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door,
And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more;
And oh! before you hurry by with ladder and with light;
O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him to-night!

The Nightjar by Henry Newbolt

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

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.