Part 1
POEMS
POEMS
BY GEOFFREY DEARMER
NEW YORK Robert M. McBride & Company 1918
Dedication
TO CHRISTOPHER
KILLED, SUVLA BAY, OCTOBER 6TH, 1915.
_At Suvla when a sickening curse of sound_ _Came hurtling from the shrapnel-shaken skies,_ _Without a word you shuddered to the ground_ _And with a gesture hid your darkening eyes._ _You are not blind to-day--_ _But were we blind before you went away?_
_Forgive us then, if, faltering, we fail_ _To speak in terms articulate of you;_ _Now Death’s celestial journeymen unveil_ _Your naked soul--the soul we hardly knew._ _O beauty scarce unfurled,_ _Your blood shall help to purify the world._
_Awakened now, no longer we believe_ _Knight-errantry a myth of long ago._ _Let us not shame your happiness and grieve;_ _All close we feel you live and move, we know_ _Your life shall ever be_ _Close to our lives enshrined eternally._
CONTENTS
I
_The Dardanelles_
PAGE
From “W” Beach 3
A Prayer 5
Fallen 6
The Turkish Trench Dog 7
The Sentinel 9
Mudros after the Evacuation 12
The Dead Turk 18
II
_B.E.F._
Missing 17
Two Trench Poems 22
Gommecourt 24
A Vision 31
Revelation 33
Tell me, Stranger 34
Spring in the Trenches 36
On the Road 38
Keats, before Action 41
The Somme 42
Somme Flower Talk 46
To the Uttermost Farthing 48
In the Mess 53
A Trench Incident 54
Reality 55
“We Poets of the Proud Old Lineage” 56
III
_Miscellaneous Poems_
Song 59
The Shadow 60
Everychild 62
Child of the Flowing Tide 64
Eight Sonnets 66
Keats 74
Meeting Her in the Street 75
Her Homage 76
Reaction 77
April 78
May-June 79
The Strolling Singer 80
The French Mother to Her Unborn Child 87
My thanks are due to the editors of the _Nineteenth Century_, _Cornhill Magazine_, _Observer_, _New Statesman_, and _Westminster Gazette_, for permission to reprint certain of these poems.
I
THE DARDANELLES
FROM “W” BEACH
The Isle of Imbros, set in turquoise blue, Lies to the westward; on the eastern side The purple hills of Asia fade from view, And rolling battleships at anchor ride.
White flocks of cloud float by, the sunset glows, And dipping gulls fleck a slow-waking sea, Where dim steel-shadowed forms with foaming bows Wind up the Narrows towards Gallipoli.
No colour breaks this tongue of barren land Save where a group of huddled tents gleams white; Before me ugly shapes like spectres stand, And wooden crosses cleave the waning light.
Celestial gardeners speed the hurrying day And sow the plains of night with silver grain; So shall this transient havoc fade away And the proud cape be beautiful again.
Laden with figs and olives, or a freight Of purple grapes, tanned singing men shall row, Chanting wild songs of how Eternal Fate Withstood that fierce invasion long ago.
A PRAYER
Lord, keep him near to me: Revive his image, let my darkening sight Renew his life by death intensified (His beating life so pitifully tried) That we may face the night And shade the agony.
We pray in barren stress Where stricken men await the shrill alarm And nightly watch, in silent order set, The beckoning stars enshrine the parapet. Lord, keep his soul from harm And grant him happiness.
When all the world is free, And, cleansed and purified by floods of pain We turn, and see the light in human eyes; When the last echo of War’s thunder dies; Lord, let us pause again In silent memory.
Gallipoli, _October, 1915_.
FALLEN
The days shall darken and sink down to Night, And Night shall break in the bleak dawn of Day: The years shall dim his face, our fleeting sight Shall see his splendid image fade away Beyond the knowledge of our drifting thought Which moves in circles to the source again, Beyond dark seas with shivering stars inwrought Beyond war-burdened men in stricken pain.
I searched in rage and passionate despair Down winding paths of thought, and comradeless In the full surge and tumult where he died I turned; and saw my Brother standing there. His face was like a dawning happiness-- I saw wounds in his hands, his feet, his side.
Gallipoli, _October, 1915_.
THE TURKISH TRENCH DOG
Night held me as I crawled and scrambled near The Turkish lines. Above, the mocking stars Silvered the curving parapet, and clear Cloud-latticed beams o’erflecked the land with bars I, crouching, lay between Tense-listening armies peering through the night, Twin giants bound by tentacles unseen. Here in dim-shadowed light I saw him, as a sudden movement turned His eyes towards me, glowing eyes that burned A moment ere his snuffling muzzle found My trail; and then as serpents mesmerise He chained me with those unrelenting eyes, That muscle-sliding rhythm, knit and bound In spare-limbed symmetry, those perfect jaws And soft-approaching pitter-patter paws. Nearer and nearer like a wolf he crept-- That moment had my swift revolver leapt-- But terror seized me, terror born of shame Brought flooding revelation. For he came As one who offers comradeship deserved, An open ally of the human race, And sniffing at my prostrate form unnerved He licked my face!
THE SENTINEL
_An Episode at the Evacuation of Gallipoli._
He stood enveloped in the darkening mist High on the cape that proudly kept her tryst Above the narrow portal. All the day White shell-flung water-spouts had scattered spray Round Helles, warden of the Eastern seas; And still the boom of Asian batteries Rumbled around the cape. The sentinel Spied from his high cliff-towered citadel The leaping flash of guns; but ere the roar Sprang from its den on the dim Asian shore, He blew a trumpet. Then, like burrowing moles, Dim forms below dashed headlong to their holes, The while that hurtling iron crossed the sea, And fifteen seconds seemed eternity. Below we lay Crushed in a lighter; and the towering spray That lately blurred the clear star-laden sea Subsided in the vast tranquillity. Now, chafing like taut-muscled charioteers With every sense on tiptoe, we strained ears For whispers, or the catch of indrawn breath. Still not the word to cut adrift the rope That moored us to a wharf of floating piers: And thus alternately in fear and hope Swung the grim pendulum of life and death.
Then suddenly the sound Of that loud warning rang the cape around. We knew a gun had flashed, we knew the roar That instant rumbled from the Asian shore; And we lie fettered to a raft!... The shell Climbs its high trajectory ... Well, What of it? Fifteen seconds less or more One--two--three--four--five--six--seven (Steady, man, It’s only Asiatic Ann) ... How slow the moments trickle--eight--nine--ten (They’re wonderful, these men). Am I a coward? I can count no more; Hold Thou my hands, O God.
The sea, upheaved in anger, rocked and swirled; Niagara seemed pelting from the stars In tumult that epitomised a world Roused by the battling impotence of wars. We heard a whispered order to escape, And casting loose, incredulously free, Unscathed, exulting in the amber light We left behind the immemorial cape.
But still above the indomitable sea From his high cliff a sentry watched the night
MUDROS AFTER THE EVACUATION
I laughed to see the gulls that dipped to cling To the torn edge of surf and blowing spray, Where some gaunt battleship, a rolling king, Still dreams of phantom battles in the bay. I saw a cloud, a full-blown cotton flower Drift vaguely like a wandering butterfly, I laughed to think it bore no pregnant shower Of blinding shrapnel scattered from the sky. Life bore new hope. An army’s great release From a closed cage walled in by fire and sea, From the hushed pause and swooping plunge of shells, Sped in a night. Here children in strange peace, Seek solitude to dull the tragedy, And needless horror of the Dardanelles.
Mudros, _January, 1916_.
THE DEAD TURK
Dead, dead, and dumbly chill. He seemed to lie Carved from the earth, in beauty without stain And suddenly Day turned to night, and I beheld again A still Centurion with eyes ablaze: And Calvary re-echoed with his cry-- His cry of stark amaze.
II
B. E. F.
MISSING
They told me nothing more: I bow my head And squander life, between the quick and dead Irresolute. Yet I again could be Mistress of life, Queen of my destiny, If I but knew--But now Remembrance plays My being back through spring and summer days We passed together; and I see him still Swinging to meet me down the tardy hill. That day the birds were new-inspired; a breeze Bestirred, as it in wonderment, the trees; The very clouds paused in their breathless race, And shadows played upon his open face; And I remember how his laughing eyes Shone deep as pools in sea-blue ecstasies. The meadow grasses rustled in the heat; I even heard the silence of his feet Down the slow hill--And now the dawning birth Of beauty woke my senses to the earth Unveiled in radiance. The sweeping skies-- Unseen unless reflected in his eyes-- Marshalled cloud companies with new delight; Just for us two the spangled dome of night Swung out the journeying moon. But still I hold Burnt in my memory in beaten gold Days when the Spring stirred in each waking bush A blue-flecked jay or tawny-feathered thrush, And drowsy Winter, startled unawares By arc-winged partridges or listening hares, Fled guiltily. We heard the magpies call-- Those dominoes at Nature’s carnival-- And once a kingfisher, a lovely gleam Snatched from a rainbow, darted to a stream. The snowdrops bowed their heads for us to see Shy peeping buds of hooded chastity; And stalwart cowslips raised sun-glinted eyes To those who stooped to pluck their sanctities. Grass-nestled crocuses that scorn the wind Speared upward proudly and besought mankind To step with care. Near by, we searched a glade Where violets brood in sweetness, half afraid To wake their petals. On we roamed, and soon The flower that shares her secret with the moon In pale gold fellowship peeped out, among A host of truculent daffodils that flung Their trumpets down the wind. Each breathless day Broke to fulfil its promise, till the May Had fledged her clustered blooms and swung her pride In bowing sweetness to the country side. Beauty was born again. But now the sound Of heavy Autumn patters to the ground, And loud discordant booms of thunder roll Where that enchanted owner of my soul Lies dead, or dying, or is living still: At last the fibres of my struggling will Falter exhausted, and my cowering brain Cries out in anguish like a child in pain.
If he is dead, then I abide to prove That brief fulfilment may be perfect love. How should I grieve? His life inspired in me A joy that shall outlive eternity, Wrought out, complete, unsnared by time and age My jewelled past my priceless heritage. Shall misery usurp my realm of years And leave me drowning in self-pitying tears, A derelict in my own whirlpool swirled-- Me--whom Love crowned an empress of the world? But sometimes ’ere the light Glimmers dawn-pearled to splash the feet of night, Ere red, sun-gilded riot floods the sky, A whisper, swelling to a ringing cry, Tells me he’s living still. No lash could sting Like this persistent voice re-echoing That mocks me as I stumble to my feet. O, shall I find him wandering in the street? But every beckoning corner drags me past Strangers, new faces, each one like the last Dull, cold, inscrutable. At times I caught The look--the walk--the gesture that I sought; And once with throbbing veins I found those eyes That shone like pools in sea-blue ecstasies, But looked beyond me--cold expressionless In vacant wonder at my helplessness, Then, haunted by that stare, Beaten, I knew the bedrock of despair. O, Thou who poised the world, are all my tears Too light, too pitiful to reach Thine ears? Locksmith of happiness, aloof, apart, Am I too impotent to touch Thine heart? Tell me he’s dead or dying; say he stands Seeking for guidance the warm touch of hands, Doomed in an instant to eternal night, With only mind and memory for sight-- For I could cheer him. But Lord quench this drought, The unfathomable immensity of doubt, Tell me he’s maimed or crippled, torn or blind, Staring through eyes that show his wandering mind-- Tell me he’s rotting in a place abhorred,-- Not this, not this, O Lord!
TWO TRENCH POEMS
I
THE STORM NIGHT
Peal after peal of splitting thunder rolls (Still roar the howling guns, and star-shells rise) We perish, drowned in anger-blasted holes, Give ear, O Lord! Our very manhood cries, Shell-fodder yea--but spare our human souls From fury-shaken skies!
II
RESURRECTION
Five million men are dead. How can the worth Of all the world redeem such waste as this? And yet the spring is clamorous of birth, And whispering in winter’s chrysalis Glad tidings to each clod, each particle of earth. So the year’s Easter triumphs. Shall we then Mourn for the dead unduly, and forget The resurrection in the hearts of men? Even the poppy on the parapet Shall blossom as before when Summer blows again.
GOMMECOURT
I
The wind, which heralded the blackening night, Swirled in grey mists the sulphur-laden smoke. From sleep, in sparkling instancy of light, Crouched batteries like grumbling tigers woke And stretched their iron symmetry; they hurled Skyward with roar and boom each pregnant shell Rumbling on tracks unseen. Such tyrants reign The sullen masters of a mangled world, Grim-mothered in a womb of furnaced hell, Wrought, forged, and hammered for the work of pain.
For six long days the common slayers played, Till, fitfully, there boomed a heavier king, Who, couched in leaves and branches deftly laid, And hid in dappled colour of the spring, Vaunted tornadoes. Far from that covered lair, Like hidden snares the sinuous trenches lay Mid fields where nodding poppies show their pride. The tall star-pointed streamers leap and flare, And turn the night’s immensity to day; Or rockets whistle in their upward ride.
II
The moment comes when thrice-embittered fire Proclaims the prelude to the great attack. In ruined heaps, torn saps and tangled wire And battered parapets loom gaunt and black: The flashes fade, the steady rattle dies, A breathless hush brings forth a troubled day, And men of sinew, knit to charge and stand, Rise up. But he of words and blinded eyes Applauds the puppets of his ghastly play, With easy rhetoric and ready hand.
Unlike those men who waited for the word, Clean soldiers from a country of the sea; These were no thong-lashed band or goaded herd Tricked by the easy speech of tyranny. All the long week they fought encircling Fate, While chaos clutched the throat and shuddered past As phantoms haunt a child, and softly creep Round cots, so Death stood sentry at the Gate And beckoned waiting terror, till at last He vanished at the hurrying touch of sleep.
The beauty of the Earth seemed doubly sweet With the stored sacraments the Summer yields-- Grass-sunken kine, and softly-hissing wheat, Blue-misted flax, and drowsy poppy fields. But with the vanished day Remembrance came Vivid with dreams, and sweet with magic song, Soft haunting echoes of a distant sea As from another world. A belt of flame Held the swift past, and made each moment long With the tense horror of mortality.
That easy lordling of the Universe Who plotted days that stain the path of time, For him was happy memory a curse, And Man a scapegoat for a royal crime. In lagging moments dearly sacrificed Men sweated blood before eternity: In cheerful agony, with jest and mirth, They shared the bitter solitude of Christ In a new Garden of Gethsemane, Gethsemane walled in by crested earth.
They won the greater battle, when each soul Lay naked to the needless wreck of Mars; Yet, splendid in perfection, faced the goal Beyond the sweeping army of the stars. Necessity foretold that they must die Mangled and helpless, crippled, maimed and blind, And cursed with all the sacrilege of war-- To force a nation to retract a lie, To prove the unchartered honour of Mankind, To show how strong the silent passions are.
III
The daylight broke and brought the awaited cheer, And suddenly the land is live with men. In steady waves the infantry surge near; The fire, a sweeping curtain, lifts again. A battle-plane with humming engines swerves, Gleams like a whirring dragon-fly, and dips, Plunging cloud-shadowed in a breathless fall To climb undaunted in far-reaching curves. And, swaying in the clouds like anchored ships, Swing grim balloons with eyes that fathom all.
But as the broad-winged battle-planes outsoared The shell-rocked skies, blue fields of cotton flowers, When bombs like bolts of thunder leapt and roared, And mighty moments faded into hours, The curtain fire redoubled yet again: The grey defence reversed their swift defeat And rallied strongly; whilst the attacking waves, Snared in a trench and severed from the main, Were driven fighting in a forced retreat Across the land that gaped with shell-turned graves.
IV
The troubled day sped on in weariness Till Night drugged Carnage in a drunken swoon. Jet-black, with spangling stars athwart her dress And pale in the shafted amber of the moon, She moved triumphant as a young-eyed queen In silent dignity: her shadowed face Scarce veiled by gossamer clouds, that scurrying ran Breathless in speed the high star-lanes between. She passed unheeding ’neath the dome of space, And scorned the petty tragedy of Man.
And one looked upward, and in wonder saw The vast star-soldiered army of the sky. Unheard, the needless blasphemy of War Shrank at that primal splendour sweeping by. The moon’s gold-shadowed craters bathed the ground-- (Pale queen, she hunted in her pathless rise Lithe blackened raiders that bomb-laden creep) But now the earth-walled comfort wrapped him round, And soon in lulled forgetfulness he lies Where soldiers clasping arms like children sleep.
Sleep held him as a mother holds her child: Sleep the soft calm that levels hopes and fears, Now stilled his brain and scarfed his eyelids wild, And sped the transient misery of tears, Until the dawn’s sure prophets cleft the night With opal shafts, and streamers tinged with flame, Swift merging riot of the turbaned East. Through rustling gesture loomed the advancing light; Through fitful eddying winds, grey vanguards came Rising in billowy mountains silver-fleeced.
And with the dawn came action, and again The spiteful interplay of static war: Dogged, with grim persistence Blood and Pain Rose venomous to greet the Morning Star. But others watched that lonely sentinel Chase fleeting fellow-stars before the day; Fresh men heard tides of thunder ebb and flow. --Stumbling in sleep, scarce heeding shot or shell, The men who fought at Gommecourt filed away: The poppies nodded as they passed below.
They left the barren wilderness behind, And Gommecourt gnarled and dauntless, till they came To fields where trees unshattered took the wind, Which tossed the crimson poppy heads to flame. But one stood musing at a waking thought That spurred his blood and dimmed his searching eyes-- The primal thought that stirs the seed to birth. Here where the battling nations clashed and fought The common grass still breathed of Paradise And Love with silent lips was Lord of Earth.
B. E. F. 1916.
A VISION
Before the dawn wind swept the troubled sky And stirred the stricken trenches far and wide, I saw the Lord of Holiness pass by, With Mary at His side.
With Mary Michael passed, for I could hear His clashing arms, and see his spangled sword. Loudly I cried out, “Mother!” then in fear, “O Mother of our Lord.”
For in her eyes all human sorrow burned, All tenderness lay naked when she smiled; And once she stooped to kiss, and once she turned And shuddered like a child.
He moved through all the surge and clash of war, The King of Kings since Brotherhood began; But in His still and shadowed face I saw The agony of Man.
And as I gazed, the ruined fields of France Loomed to the dawn in shades of shifting grey; Dumbly I stood to arms, as in a trance I watched the climbing day.
Was this a dream? Yet Mary saw the sky, Lit by a vision from the darkness hurled; A little dream which made a baby cry-- A dream which saved the world.
REVELATION