Since life on earth began,
15
And the spent world sinks back again
Hopeless of God and Man.
A people and their King
Through ancient sin grown strong,
Because they feared no reckoning
20
Would set no bound to wrong;
But now their hour is past,
And we who bore it find
Evil Incarnate held at last
To answer to mankind.
25
For agony and spoil
Of nations beat to dust,
For poisoned air and tortured soil
And cold, commanded lust,
And every secret woe
30
The shuddering waters saw –
Willed and fulfilled by high and low –
Let them relearn the Law:
That when the dooms are read,
Not high nor low shall say: –
35
‘My haughty or my humble head
Has saved me in this day.’
That, till the end of time,
Their remnant shall recall
Their fathers’ old, confederate crime
40
Availed them not at all:
That neither schools nor priests,
Nor Kings may build again
A people with the hearts of beasts
Made wise concerning men.
45
Whereby our dead shall sleep
In honour, unbetrayed,
And we in faith and honour keep
That peace for which they paid.
The Hyaenas
After the burial-parties leave
And the baffled kites have fled;
The wise hyaenas come out at eve
To take account of our dead.
5
How he died and why he died
Troubles them not a whit.
They snout the bushes and stones aside
And dig till they come to it.
They are only resolute they shall eat
10
That they and their mates may thrive;
And they know that the dead are safer meat
Than the weakest thing alive.
(For a goat may butt, and a worm may sting,
And a child will sometimes stand;
15
But a poor dead soldier of the King
Can never lift a hand.)
They whoop and halloo and scatter the dirt
Until their tushes white
Take good hold of the Army shirt,
20
And tug the corpse to light,
And the pitiful face is shown again
For an instant ere they close;
But it is not discovered to living men –
Only to God and to those
25
Who, being soulless, are free from shame,
Whatever meat they may find.
Nor do they defile the dead man’s name –
That is reserved for his kind.
En-Dor
(1914–19–?)
‘Behold there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at En-dor’
I Samuel 28: 7
The road to En-dor is easy to tread
For Mother or yearning Wife.
There, it is sure, we shall meet our Dead
As they were even in life.
5
Earth has not dreamed of the blessing in store
For desolate hearts on the road to En-dor.
Whispers shall comfort us out of the dark –
Hands – ah, God! – that we knew!
Visions and voices – look and hark! –
10
Shall prove that the tale is true,
And that those who have passed to the further shore
May be hailed – at a price – on the road to En-dor.
But they are so deep in their new eclipse
Nothing they say can reach,
15
Unless it be uttered by alien lips
And framed in a stranger’s speech.
The son must send word to the mother that bore
Through an hireling’s mouth. ’Tis the rule of En-dor.
And not for nothing these gifts are shown
20
By such as delight our Dead.
They must twitch and stiffen and slaver and groan
Ere the eyes are set in the head,
And the voice from the belly begins. Therefore,
We pay them a wage where they ply at En-dor.
25
Even so, we have need of faith
And patience to follow the clue.
Often, at first, what the dear one saith
Is babble, or jest, or untrue.
(Lying spirits perplex us sore
30
Till our loves – and their lives – are well known at En-dor) …
Oh, the road to En-dor is the oldest road
And the craziest road of all!
Straight it runs to the Witch’s abode,
As it did in the days of Saul.
35
And nothing has changed of the sorrow in store
For such as go down on the road to En-dor!
Gethsemane
1914–18
The Garden called Gethsemane
In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
The English soldiers pass.
5
We used to pass – we used to pass
Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
Beyond Gethsemane.
The Garden called Gethsemane,
10
It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
I prayed my cup might pass.
The officer sat on the chair,
The men lay on the grass,
15
And all the time we halted there
I prayed my cup might pass.
It didn’t pass – it didn’t pass –
It didn’t pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
20
Beyond Gethsemane!
The Craftsman
Once, after long-drawn revel at The Mermaid,
He to the overbearing Boanerges,
Jonson, uttered (if half of it were liquor,
Blessed be the vintage!)
5
Saying how, at an alehouse under Cotswold,
He had made sure of his very Cleopatra
Drunk with enormous, salvation-contemning
Love for a tinker.
How, while he hid from Sir Thomas’s keepers,
10
Crouched in a ditch and drenched by the midnight
Dews, he had listened to gipsy Juliet
Rail at the dawning.
How at Bankside, a boy drowning kittens
Winced at the business; whereupon his sister –
15
Lady Macbeth aged seven – thrust ’em under,
Sombrely scornful.
How on a Sabbath, hushed and compassionate –
She being known since her birth to the townsfolk –
Stratford dredged and delivered from Avon
20
Dripping Ophelia.
So, with a thin third finger marrying
Drop to wine-drop domed on the table,
Shakespeare opened his heart till the sunrise
Entered to hear him.
25
London waked and he, imperturbable,
Passed from waking to hurry after shadows …
Busied upon shows of no earthly importance?
Yes, but he knew it!
The Benefactors
Ah! What avails the classic bent
And what the cultured word,
Against the undoctored incident
That actually occurred?
; 5
And what is Art whereto we press
Through paint and prose and rhyme –
When Nature in her nakedness
Defeats us every time?
It is not learning, grace nor gear,
10
Nor easy meat and drink,
But bitter pinch of pain and fear
That makes creation think.
When in this world’s unpleasing youth
Our god-like race began,
15
The longest arm, the sharpest tooth,
Gave man control of man;
Till, bruised and bitten to the bone
And taught by pain and fear,
He learned to deal the far-off stone,
20
And poke the long, safe spear.
So tooth and nail were obsolete
As means against a foe,
Till, bored by uniform defeat,
Some genius built the bow.
25
Then stone and javelin proved as vain
As old-time tooth and nail,
Till, spurred anew by fear and pain,
Man fashioned coats of mail.
Then was there safety for the rich
30
And danger for the poor,
Till someone mixed a powder which
Redressed the scale once more.
Helmet and armour disappeared
With sword and bow and pike,
35
And, when the smoke of battle cleared,
All men were armed alike …
And when ten million such were slain
To please one crazy king,
Man, schooled in bulk by fear and pain,
40
Grew weary of the thing;
And, at the very hour designed,
To enslave him past recall,
His tooth-stone-arrow-gun-shy mind
Turned and abolished all.
45
All Power, each Tyrant, every Mob
Whose head has grown too large,
Ends by destroying its own job
And earns its own discharge;
And Man, whose mere necessities
50
Move all things from his path,
Trembles meanwhile at their decrees,
And deprecates their wrath!
Natural Theology
PRIMITIVE
I ate my fill of a whale that died
And stranded after a month at sea …
There is a pain in my inside.
Why have the Gods afflicted me?
5
Ow! I am purged till I am a wraith!
Wow! I am sick till I cannot see!
What is the sense of Religion and Faith?
Look how the Gods have afflicted me!
PAGAN
How can the skin of rat or mouse hold
10
Anything more than a harmless flea? …
The burning plague has taken my household.
Why have my Gods afflicted me?
All my kith and kin are deceased,
Though they were as good as good could be.
15
I will out and batter the family priest,
Because my Gods have afflicted me!
MEDIAEVAL
My privy and well drain into each other
After the custom of Christendie …
Fevers and fluxes are wasting my mother.
20
Why has the Lord afflicted me?
The Saints are helpless for all I offer –
So are the clergy I used to fee.
Henceforward I keep my cash in my coffer,
Because the Lord has afflicted me.
MATERIAL
25
I run eight hundred hens to the acre.
They die by dozens mysteriously …
I am more than doubtful concerning my Maker.
Why has the Lord afflicted me?
What a return for all my endeavour –
30
Not to mention the L.S.D.!
I am an atheist now and for ever,
Because this God has afflicted me!
PROGRESSIVE
Money spent on an Army or Fleet
Is homicidal lunacy …
35
My son has been killed in the Mons retreat.
Why is the Lord afflicting me?
Why are murder, pillage and arson
And rape allowed by the Deity?
I will write to the Times, deriding our parson,
40
Because my God has afflicted me.
CHORUS
We had a kettle: we let it leak:
Our not repairing it made it worse.
We haven’t had any tea for a week …
The bottom is out of the Universe!
CONCLUSION
45
This was none of the good Lord’s pleasure,
For the Spirit He breathed in Man is free;
But what comes after is measure for measure
And not a God that afflicteth thee.
As was the sowing so the reaping
50
Is now and evermore shall be.
Thou art delivered to thine own keeping.
Only Thyself hath afflicted thee!
Epitaphs of the War
1914–18
‘EQUALITY OF SACRIFICE’
A. ‘I was a “have”. B. ‘I was a “have-not”.’
(Together.) ‘What hast thou given which I gave not?’
A SERVANT
We were together since the War began.
He was my servant – and the better man.
A SON
My son was killed while laughing at some jest. I would I knew
What it was, and it might serve me in a time when jests are few.
AN ONLY SON
I have slain none except my Mother. She
(Blessing her slayer) died of grief for me.
EX-CLERK
Pity not! The Army gave
Freedom to a timid slave:
In which Freedom did he find
Strength of body, will, and mind:
By which strength he came to prove
Mirth, Companionship, and Love:
For which Love to Death he went:
In which Death he lies content.
THE WONDER
Body and Spirit I surrendered whole
To harsh Instructors – and received a soul …
Rudyard Kipling: Selected Poems Page 20