Modern British Poetry Part 28

I have forgotten whence I came, Or what my home might be, Or by what strange and savage name I called that thundering sea.

I only know the sun shone down As still it shines to-day, And in my fingers long and brown The little pebbles lay.

_Anna Wickham_

Anna Wickham, one of the most individual of the younger women-poets, has published two distinctive volumes, _The Contemplative Quarry_ (1915) and _The Man with a Hammer_ (1916).

THE SINGER

If I had peace to sit and sing, Then I could make a lovely thing; But I am stung with goads and whips, So I build songs like iron ships.

Let it be something for my song, If it is sometimes swift and strong.

REALITY

Only a starveling singer seeks The stuff of songs among the Greeks.

Juno is old, Jove's loves are cold; Tales over-told.

By a new risen Attic stream A mortal singer dreamed a dream.

Fixed he not Fancy's habitation, Nor set in bonds Imagination.

There are new waters, and a new Humanity.

For all old myths give us the dream to be.

We are outwearied with Persephone; Rather than her, we'll sing Reality.

SONG

I was so chill, and overworn, and sad, To be a lady was the only joy I had.

I walked the street as silent as a mouse, Buying fine clothes, and fittings for the house.

But since I saw my love I wear a simple dress, And happily I move Forgetting weariness.

_Siegfried Sa.s.soon_

Siegfried Loraine Sa.s.soon, the poet whom Masefield hailed as "one of England's most brilliant rising stars," was born September 8, 1886. He was educated at Marlborough and Clare College, Cambridge, and was a captain in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. He fought three times in France, once in Palestine, winning the Military Cross for bringing in wounded on the battlefield.

His poetry divides itself sharply in two moods--the lyric and the ironic. His early lilting poems were without significance or individuality. But with _The Old Huntsman_ (1917) Sa.s.soon found his own idiom, and became one of the leading younger poets upon the appearance of this striking volume. The first poem, a long monologue evidently inspired by Masefield, gave little evidence of what was to come. Immediately following it, however, came a series of war poems, undisguised in their tragedy and bitterness. Every line of these quivering stanzas bore the mark of a sensitive and outraged nature; there was scarcely a phrase that did not protest against the "glorification" and false glamour of war.

_Counter-Attack_ appeared in 1918. In this volume Sa.s.soon turned entirely from an ordered loveliness to the gigantic brutality of war.

At heart a lyric idealist, the b.l.o.o.d.y years intensified and twisted his tenderness till what was stubborn and satiric in him forced its way to the top. In _Counter-Attack_ Sa.s.soon found his angry outlet.

Most of these poems are choked with pa.s.sion; many of them are torn out, roots and all, from the very core of an intense conviction; they rush on, not so much because of the poet's art but almost in spite of it. A suave utterance, a neatly-joined structure would be out of place and even inexcusable in poems like "The Rear-Guard," "To Any Dead Officer," "Does It Matter?"--verses that are composed of love, fever and indignation.

Can Sa.s.soon see nothing glorious or uplifting in war? His friend, Robert Nichols, another poet and soldier, speaks for him in a preface.

"Let no one ever," Nichols quotes Sa.s.soon as saying, "from henceforth say one word in any way countenancing war. It is dangerous even to speak of how here and there the individual may gain some hardship of soul by it. For war is h.e.l.l, and those who inst.i.tute it are criminals.

Were there even anything to say for it, it should not be said; for its spiritual disasters far outweigh any of its advantages...." Nichols adds his approval to these sentences, saying, "For myself, this is the truth. War does not enn.o.ble, it degrades."

Early in 1920 Sa.s.soon visited America. At the same time he brought out his _Picture Show_ (1920), a vigorous answer to those who feared that Sa.s.soon had "written himself out" or had begun to burn away in his own fire. Had Rupert Brooke lived, he might have written many of these lacerated but somehow exalted lines. Sa.s.soon's three volumes are the most vital and unsparing records of the war we have had. They synthesize in poetry what Barbusse's _Under Fire_ spreads out in panoramic prose.

TO VICTORY

Return to greet me, colours that were my joy, Not in the woeful crimson of men slain, But shining as a garden; come with the streaming Banners of dawn and sundown after rain.

I want to fill my gaze with blue and silver, Radiance through living roses, spires of green, Rising in young-limbed copse and lovely wood, Where the hueless wind pa.s.ses and cries unseen.

I am not sad; only I long for l.u.s.tre,-- Tired of the greys and browns and leafless ash.

I would have hours that move like a glitter of dancers, Far from the angry guns that boom and flash.

Return, musical, gay with blossom and fleetness, Days when my sight shall be clear and my heart rejoice; Come from the sea with breadth of approaching brightness, When the blithe wind laughs on the hills with uplifted voice.

DREAMERS

Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land, Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.

In the great hour of destiny they stand, Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.

Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats, And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain, Dreaming of things they did with b.a.l.l.s and bats, And mocked by hopeless longing to regain Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats, And going to the office in the train.

THE REAR-GUARD

Groping along the tunnel, step by step, He winked his prying torch with patching glare From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.

Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know, A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed; And he, exploring fifty feet below The rosy gloom of battle overhead.

Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw someone lie Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug, And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug.

"I'm looking for headquarters." No reply.

"G.o.d blast your neck!" (For days he'd had no sleep.) "Get up and guide me through this stinking place."

Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap, And flashed his beam across the livid face Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore Agony dying hard ten days before; And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound.

Alone he staggered on until he found Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair To the dazed, muttering creatures underground Who hear the boom of sh.e.l.ls in m.u.f.fled sound.

At last, with sweat of horror in his hair, He climbed through darkness to the twilight air, Unloading h.e.l.l behind him step by step.

THRUSHES

Tossed on the glittering air they soar and skim, Whose voices make the emptiness of light A windy palace. Quavering from the brim Of dawn, and bold with song at edge of night, They clutch their leafy pinnacles and sing Scornful of man, and from his toils aloof Whose heart's a haunted woodland whispering; Whose thoughts return on tempest-baffled wing; Who hears the cry of G.o.d in everything, And storms the gate of nothingness for proof.