Part 2

_Have_ you forgotten? you who dine to-night In comfort at the Carlton or Savoy. (Lord, but I’d like a dart at that myself-- Oysters, _crême_ something, sole _vin blanc_, a bird, And one cold bottle of the very best-- A girl to share it: afterwards, a show-- Lee White and Alfred Lester, Nelson Keys; Supper to follow.

... Our Brigade’s in rest-- The usual farm. I’ve got the only bed. The men are fairly comfy--three good barns. Thank God, they didn’t have to bivouac After this last month in the Salient.) ...

You _have_ forgotten; or you couldn’t write This sort of stuff--all cant, no guts in it, Hardly a single picture true to life.

Well, here’s a picture for you: Montauban-- Last year--the flattened village on our left-- On our right flank, the razed Briqueterie, Their five-nines pounding bits to dustier bits-- Behind, a cratered slope, with batteries Crashing and flashing, violet in the dusk, And prematuring every now and then-- In front, the ragged Bois de Bernafay, Bosche whizz-bangs bursting white among its trees.

You had been doing F.O.O. that day; (The Staff knows why we had an F.O.O.: One couldn’t flag-wag through Trônes Wood; the wires Went down as fast as one could put them up; And messages by runner took three hours.) I got the wind up rather: you were late, And they’d been shelling like the very deuce. However, back you came. I see you now, Staggering into “mess”--a broken trench, Two chalk-walls roofed with corrugated iron, And, round the traverse, Driver Noakes’s stove Stinking and smoking while we ate our grub. Your face was blue-white, streaked with dirt; your eyes Had shrunk into your head, as though afraid To watch more horrors; you were sodden-wet With greasy coal-black mud--and other things. Sweating and shivering, speechless, there you stood. I gave you whisky, made you talk. You said: “Major, another signaller’s been killed.” “Who?” “Gunner Andrews, blast them. O my Christ! His head--split open--when his brains oozed out, They looked like bloody sweetbreads, in the muck.”

And you’re the chap who writes this claptrap verse!

Lord, if I’d half _your_ brains, I’d write a book: None of your sentimental platitudes, But something real, vital; that should strip The glamour from this outrage we call war, Shewing it naked, hideous, stupid, vile-- One vast abomination. So that they Who, coming after, till the ransomed fields Where our lean corpses rotted in the ooze, Reading my written words, should understand This stark stupendous horror, visualize The unutterable foulness of it all.... I’d shew them, not your glamourous “glorious game,” Which men play “jesting” “for their honour’s sake”-- (A kind of Military Tournament, With just a hint of danger--bound in cloth!)-- But War,--as war is now, and always was: A dirty, loathsome, servile murder-job:-- Men, lousy, sleepless, ulcerous, afraid, Toiling their hearts out in the pulling slime That wrenches gum-boot down from bleeding heel And cakes in itching arm-pits, navel, ears: Men stunned to brainlessness, and gibbering: Men driving men to death and worse than death: Men maimed and blinded: men against machines-- Flesh versus iron, concrete, flame and wire: Men choking out their souls in poison-gas: Men squelched into the slime by trampling feet: Men, disembowelled by guns five miles away, Cursing, with their last breath, the living God Because he made them, in His image, men.... So--were your talent mine--I’d write of war For those who, coming after, know it not.

And if posterity should ask of me What high, what base emotions keyed weak flesh To face such torments, I would answer: “_You!_ Not for themselves, O daughters, grandsons, sons, Your tortured forebears wrought this miracle; Not for themselves, _accomplished utterly_ This loathliest task of murderous servitude; But just because they realized that thus, _And only thus_, by sacrifice, might they Secure a world worth living in--_for you_.” ...

Good-night, my soldier-poet. _Dormez bien!_

“One of Them”

_Being in Some Respects a Sequel to “One of Us”_

I.

_Wherein the bard--released from War’s confusions-- Preludes with egotistical allusions._

Six years ago--or is it six-and-twenty? (How vast the gulf from those ecstatic days!)-- When the whole earth snored on in slothful plenty (Tho’ poets cashed small pittance for their lays); When war appeared less real than G. A. Henty, And Oxo’s snaky signs were yet ablaze; When all seemed peaceful as the press of Cadbury, And no one dreamed of bombs, or bet a Bradbury;

Or e’er stern Mars had roped us in his tether, Ere British guns had thundered at Le Câteau: We fitted out--my Muse and I together-- And launched adown the galley-slips of Chatto A barque of verse, full-rigged for halcyon weather, Which many a critic judged to take the _gâteau_: (Though some there were, high pundits of disparity, Who wept at our unscholarly vulgarity).

We have sailed far since then; crossed our horizon; Published our loves and travels in a novel (A tale, men say, that Peckham’s flapper cries on, So that both Boots and Smith’s before us grovel); And eaten ration bully-beef--with flies on; And sheltered gratefully in many a hovel, What time we sang of guns and gore and trenches-- Instead of oysters, tango-teas and wenches.

For times have changed since we wrote “One of Us”: _Et nos mutamus_--more or less--_in illis_. Muse finds herself _in urbe_ somewhat _rus_; And I--if I disport with Amaryllis-- Where once my motor flashed, prefer a ’bus; And shuddering note how vast the supper-bill is; And signing, sigh in secret for the calm, Chaste, cheap seclusion of my Chiltern farm.

Yes, Muse and I are tired, and super-serious: Her damask cheek is lined a bit, and wrinkled. We are grown old, and London’s late nights weary us: While the gold wine that erst in ice-pail tinkled, Her doctor finds extremely deleterious; And mine forbids me red lips, passion-crinkled: So now we cultivate domestic habits Amongst our pigs, our poultry, and our rabbits.

Yet sometimes, as we trench our stubborn soil, Or feed our sows, or strow the peat-moss litter, Or set the morrow’s chicken-mash to boil, Or wander out where our young turkeys twitter, Or read by mellow candle-light--since oil Is dear and scarce; or talk--a little bitter Because we find that Food Control Committees Are all composed of men brought up in cities;

Sometimes, in this five-acre paradise Whither my nerve-racked spirit fled the battle Deferring to sound Harley Street advice-- A silver badge its only martial chattel, I hear a voice, loud as the market price That butchers bid for Rhondda’s missing cattle, Voice of my Muse, still vibrant with old passion, Telling how poetry is now the fashion.

“Look you,” she cries, “the Wheels are turning, turning. Though Pegasus long since wore out his pinions, Somehow his shod hooves keep the bread-mills churning. Shrill, night and day, sing Marsh Georgian minions: Each sinking sun sets some new Noyes a-burning, Each rising moon reveals fresh hordes of Binyons; Who batten fat on unsuspecting editors, And--unlike you--contrive to pay their creditors.

“Poet, forsooth! You agricultural brute! Have you no soul above the weight of porkers? Was it for this I hearkened to your suit, Gave you my metres and my rhymes--some, corkers? Up, Gilbert! rummage out your rusty lute: Polish it blacker than your black Minorcas: And let its notes once more, in refluent stanzas, Dower the Income-tax with glad Bonanzas.”

So she; and--since I loathe to disappoint The least illusion of the equal sex-- Let Byron’s oil once more these locks anoint, Once more let honour meet these Cox-drawn cheques ... Though well I know that times are spare of joint, And satire’s song less like to please than vex; Now small beer, Smallwood, raids and strikes and rations, Have near eclipsed the gaiety of nations:

Still, let me sing. Yet not as once I sung: Love, fear, and death have chastened, sobered, saddened, One who knew life’s full burden-time too young; Whom never youth’s unhampered freedom gladdened, But only envy and ambition stung, And fickle passions--in love’s semblance maddened; So that he needs must tumble now, poor clown, On this Pindaric stage for half-a-crown:

Yet one who, ’spite a past that shocked St. Tony And paid recording angels overtime, Still holds his own at sonnet or _canzone_. As some shall know who follow this, my rhyme-- Some few: for gladly would I lay a pony, Or larger sum, against a ten-cent dime, That most of those who read this metred tract’ll Not know a spondee from a pterodactyl.

II.

_Explains--a task few modern penmen shirk-- The sociology of this great work._

God bless Democracy, George Bernard Shaw, And William Dunn, our sanest, saintliest hatter! God bless that great anomaly, the Law; Aye, may our knights on hoarded tea wax fatter! God bless Sir Arthur Yapp’s unfailing jaw, Lord Lansdowne’s pen, and brave Horatio’s chatter! And--lest in England Bolos quite prevail-- God bless King Northcliffe and his “Daily Mail!”

Long live the old Press--“Times,” “D. T.,” “Spectator”! Long live the New--“Age,” “Europe,” “Statesman,” “Witness”! Long live each _acti temporis laudator_! Long live Lloyd George in unmolested Pitt-ness! Long live “The Nation,” facile demonstrator Of everybody’s--save its own--unfitness! Long live Valera, Carson, Devlin, Plunkett! Long live the lads who fight, the cads who funk it!

Long live our German banks, _sub duce_ Plender! Long may our railways rule our bounding sea! Long may impatient Cuthberts paw their fender, What time their patient Phyllis pours their tea! Long life to each investor and each spender! Long live the Staff! Long live the A.S.E.! So long as England’s in the melting-pot, A prudent bard must sing, “Long live the lot!”

For who shall say--at close of Armageddon, When the world’s finished beggaring its neighbour, When the last shell’s been fired, the last pig fed on-- If we’ll be ruled by Capital or Labour: If a Welsh harp shall twang part-songs of Seddon, While Simon pipes a compromising tabor: Or whether every stalwart War-Loan-lender’s son Will find his Empire dividends signed “Henson”?

Not I: not all the better men who fought While dilutees preserved their precious skin: Not those great early dead, whose single thought Ran--“England: Germany: we’ve got to _win_.” Poor simple souls, of H. G. Wells untaught, They never realized their next-of-kin Would read how they had died to make life cheerier For the dear blacks in Briningized Nigeria.

Public, forgive your fool; if now and then-- Black bubbles on the verse’s stream--appear Thoughts of our worn, unlettered fighting-men; If sometimes, through the grease-paint’s gay veneer, Truth shews--a wrinkled hag. The traitor pen Forgets how blood is cheap and paper dear: And I’m no more the blithe, nut-loving squirrel Who frisked it in the consulship of Birrell.

Which is, perchance, the reason why my mind Turns oft to those dear days, now dead as mutton; When Haldane’s soul with Bethmann-Hollweg dined; And no one ploughed up golf-greens, sown by Sutton, To bed the humble tuber’s sprouting rind; Or dashed off shorthand _billets-doux_ in Dutton, Or changed a blear-eyed pauper to a swell man In six short weeks of concentrated Pelman:

Why now--sad minstrel in un-Sandoned sack-cloth-- I sing the twilight of the times I knew. No more our glaring footlights blurr a back-cloth Woven of misery and hung askew; For Time, stern judge of Us, has donned his black cloth, And to the Mob delivered up the Few ... Unless, of course, the Mob’s but swapped its Peers For a worse dynasty--of profiteers.

God knows, _we_ had our faults--greed, blindness, pride. God also knows we had a dashed good time. Were they the worse for that--our boys who died, By earth and air and sea in every clime? God knows! But if ghost-feet still strut and side About their clubs, if ghost-eyes read this rhyme, I think they’d like their vanished epoch’s swan-song To be a merry tune, and not a wan song.

So clear the stage, and ring the curtain up! Once more--ere Empires yield to Leagues of Nations, And bayonets to Socialistic gup-- Let Beauty, in diaphanous creations, Ogle the stalls, and subsequently sup Off iced champagne and ortolan collations.... Whereafter, if my pen won’t bring me pelf, Damned if I don’t turn Socialist myself!

III.

_Sets forth, despite the Law’s dull interference, A lady’s birth, age, family, and appearance._

Arms have I sung full oft, both steel and white ones; Guns have I sung till I can sing no more; Men have I sung, both common and polite ones: Yet never sang _one_ heroine before. Come, then, my ghost-girls, dark, fair, plump, and slight ones, Come in the finest, flimsiest frocks ye wore.... Alas, not one of you quite fills the bill-- A life-size model for my Lady Jill.

Pardon, then, Magda, Gladys, Nancy, Florence, Doris, Patricia, Mollie, Celandine, Nor hold your erstwhile suitor in abhorrence Because, from one, he takes eyes subtly green; From other, hands a Sargent or a Lawrence Had envied for his canvas; here, the sheen Of gold hair, auburn-shot, in whose abundance, What time Jill dreamed, young Cupids watched the sun dance;

There a smooth throat, an arched, attractive ankle, Soft cheek, curved back in bloom to close-set ear, Red mouth full-lipped, a voice whose love-tones rankle Still in this heart of mine,--a voice so dear That ... But no more! In fear this rhyming prank’ll Offend some damozel whom I revere, I state: Jill’s just an ordinary blonde, Fair, frail, flirtatious, rather fast than fond.

You know the type--aristo-plutocratic, Out of blue blood by hard North Country cash; A self-assertive sire; a dam, lymphatic (Since rarely strawberry leaves and sovereigns clash); Their sole son, daring in the diplomatic (Thumping his Underwood while kingdoms crash); Their daughter ... Is there a man alive can swear Exactly what she did or did not dare?

For Jill was one of those astounding females, Born in a chaster, pre-Edwardian day; When lone Lucindas dared not dine nor tea males For dread lest scandal dub them “_coryphée_”; When none drank deep of D’Abernonian dream-ales, But quietly our Empire went its way, Nor realised that subalterns on horses Monopolized the brain-power of its Forces:

One who was yet a span from flapperhood, Still puzzling o’er the simplest of equations; What time in robe of saffron Phoebus stood, And all our Lanes were gay with green carnations, And private hansoms sought the Johnian Wood, And the shrill cycle-bell’s first tintillations Resounded from the dawning to the dark In a Rolls-Royceless, Peter Panless Park:

One who attained the pig-tail’s ribboned dowry, And helped to pass a Kipling tambourine, When first from lands of wattle, maple, Maori, Men came at summons of a dying Queen: One who, at Auteuil, Dresden, and Rathgowrie, Acquired that polish reft of which, I ween, It is not possible for our Dianas To emulate a modern _grande dame’s_ manners:

One on whose head the ostrich-feathers nodded In Alexandrine courts--and _chez_ Bassano; In whose young ears, song’s angels disembodied. Rang the last notes of Melbourne’s own soprano; Whose lithe feet, Moykoff-shod, the grouse-moors plodded, Or danced the new Machiché Brasiliano, In times before, unchaperoned of skinny ma, Suburbia’s daughters sought the darkling kinema:

To put the matter briefly--One of Them. Bear witness, Muses Nine, how most unworthy Is my gold nib to touch their garment’s hem. Say, Byron (for as bard I still prefer thee To all whose pallid minor stars be-gem These Gotha nights) would not such task deter thee From the rhymed octave--sometime known as Whistlecraft-- In which, poor ass, I ply this weekly thistlecraft?

Οίμοι! that I can never be a poet Modelled on spoon-fed college Adonäises, Whose metres reek of Porson, Jebb, and Jowett, Whose very thoughts derive from donnish däises. Alas! for us who, writing life, must know it-- Its sights, its scents, its ladies, lords, and Läises. Alas! for my refusal to disseminate-- Even in verse--the scholarly-effeminate.

And oh! ten thousand times alas, should Jill Be recognised in these Parnassian pages. Woe for the libel action, and the bill Which he must face who in the law engages. And ah! thank Heaven for a metric skill That shields this head from Justice Darling’s rages ... Safeguarded by thy last experience, G. Moore, I maiden-name my lady--Lewis-Seymour.

IV.

_In which the author, contrary to custom, Goes for the gloves--as Sohrab went for Rustum._

I have discovered, after much perusal Of Cannan, George Mackenzie, Walpole, Bennett, A Law whose discipline brooks no refusal,-- A neo-rheo-literary tenet Which runs: “In art, forbear to pick and choose. All That happens, happens. Wherefore, up and pen it! Let the scribe’s tale be casual and cursory; End where you like--but start us in the nursery.”

And so I fain had traced, through many a canto, My heroine; all dimples in her cot; Bored with her lessons; laughing at the panto.; Immersed in “Fauntleroy” or Walter Scott: But, since green herbs from memory’s _campo santo_ Provide no flavouring for satire’s pot, For seething, bubbling cauldron such as this is, I’ll skip the skipping-rope and jump to kisses.

* * * * *

’Tis such a night as only London knew In the full seasons of our heart’s content-- When, like some fairy pageant in review, Love, Pleasure, Luxury together blent, Made life not all too boring for the Few; And Unemployment, fix’t at ten per cent., Furnished--by all means of charity bazaars-- Right many a dame with perquisites and “pars.”

London, in London’s June! Above, the starshine: Below, against the rails of Berkeley Square, The patient lights of brougham, or rarer car, shine-- Waiting stiff-shirted squires and ladies fair: Music, from high French windows that afar shine, Thrills, till a dancer well might curse and swear, And call himself a “dashed unlucky fella” To miss the Lewis-Seymour’s Cinderella.

Within those halls, where plush-breeched flunkeys stand, What sounds, what scents, what visions of delight! How--to the bluest Blue Hungarian band-- Youth whirls away the unreturning night! How--perfumed as the blooms of Samarcand-- The dying flow’rets whisper, “Carlton White!” But, oh! to weary war-time ration-hunters, How like a dream, this stand-up supper--Gunter’s!

For here, in reach of every slender hand which is Scarce languidly outstretched to porcelain plate, Are dainties drawn from each vale, stream, or strand which is Most famed for fruit or fish or fowl or cate: Creamed strawberries; thin, lavish-buttered sandwiches Of livered geese (that now squawk Hymns of Hate), Of priceless hams and tongues and caviar; ices; And sugared sweets in myriad strange devices....

Yet sweeter far than all these sweet things, Jill is: Queen of my verse and this “Young People’s Dance”: Fairer than fairest of Mayfairy fillies! Sweet, is the smile that lights a countenance Bright as moon-dappled, pink-tipped lotus-lilies; Sweet, are her jade-green eyes that gleam and glance-- And give no hint of yester-tea-time’s flare-up When stern mamma forbade her bind her hair up.

Jill’s hair! How beautiful it is; the tresses Warm-golden, soft as cygnet’s earliest downing. Jill’s foot! How slim the arch the flounce caresses. Jill’s brow! How pure; how yet uncreased in frowning. (My Muse! How easily the jade impresses On this base coin a stamp of pseudo-Browning.) Jill’s youth! Jill’s dreams! These luxuries that lap her!... Don’t they present a most alluring flapper?

So thinks, at least, this lad in evening raiment-- Shoes, shirt-front, collar, waistcoat-buttons, glowing; This sub. of other days--when soldier’s payment Scarcely sufficed each monthly mess-bill’s owing, And triple stars full fifteen years delay meant; He, who presents the goblet, over-flowing With icy rubies to its crinkled brim, And asks if Jill won’t “sit this out” with him....

And there it hangs, word-carven, my last image. (Browning again! now Keats!) O hapless pair, Loth lover and bold maiden of a dim age-- Lost to us now, and dead, but still most fair. O Attic shapes! Arcadian girlhood’s slim age, And silken youth with brilliantined hair! What climaxes must I not sacrifice, Who write this epic at a weekly price?

For--as long melodies are sweet, but sweeter Poems in short instalments, such as mine-- Seven full days, teased puppet of this metre, Must thy parched tongue await that roseate wine; Seven full nights, fond boy, must thou entreat her; Whilst mantle to her cheeks, incarnadine, Youth’s beauty, beauty’s youth--and readers vex’t Know, need know, nothing more till Tuesday next.

V.

_Brings life to week-old statues; makes them prance To love’s light tune--and ends the Seymours’ dance._

Pale shapes I locked in memory’s studio, Your draperies stir. From vein to marble vein The life-blood leaps. Eyes gleam, and pulses glow. Once more my octaves rap their old refrain To re-create the weekly puppet-show. Fond boy, to work! My Jill’s herself again, And answers your entreaty--sideways glancing-- “Perhaps I will. It’s jolly hot for dancing.”

So they twain pass--smart sub. and flapper stately-- From the high halls of Gunter’s prank’t refection. And out across the waxèd boards, where lately Twirled the swift waltz to _La Poupée’s_ “Selection.” And on, past couples gossiping sedately; And on, past couples screened against detection; To a dim-shaded, fairy-lighted alcove, Fit haunt for single maid and single tall cove:--