Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50)

by Homer

  Now he will never feel again how slim

  Girls’ waists are, or how warm their subtle hands.

  All of them touch him like some queer disease.

  There was an artist silly for his face,

  For it was younger than his youth, last year.

  Now, he is old; his back will never brace;

  He’s lost his colour very far from here,

  Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,

  And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race

  And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.

  One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg,

  After the matches, carried shoulder-high.

  It was after football, when he’d drunk a peg,

  He thought he’d better join. - He wonders why.

  Someone had said he’d look a god in kilts,

  That’s why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,

  Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts

  He asked to join. He didn’t have to beg;

  Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years.

  Germans he scarcely thought of; all their guilt,

  And Austria’s, did not move him. And no fears

  Of Fear came yet. He drought of jewelled hills

  For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;

  And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;

  Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.

  And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.

  Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.

  Only a solemn man who brought him fruits

  Thanked him; and then enquired about his soul.

  Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes,

  And do what things the rules consider wise,

  And take whatever pity they may dole.

  Tonight he noticed how the women’s eyes

  Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.

  How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come

  And put him into bed? Why don’t they come?

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  1914

  War broke: and now the Winter of the world

  With perishing great darkness closes in.

  The foul tornado, centred at Berlin,

  Is over all the width of Europe whirled,

  Rending the sails of progress. Rent or furled

  Are all Art’s ensigns. Verse wails. Now begin

  Famines of thought and feeling. Love’s wine’s thin.

  The grain of human Autumn rots, down-hurled.

  For after Spring had bloomed in early Greece,

  And Summer blazed her glory out with Rome,

  An Autumn softly fell, a harvest home,

  A slow grand age, and rich with all increase.

  But now, for us, wild Winter, and the need

  Of sowings for new Spring, and blood for seed.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Exposure

  I

  OUR brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us...

  Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent...

  Low, drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient...

  Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,

  But nothing happens.

  Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,

  Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.

  Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,

  Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.

  What are we doing here?

  The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow...

  We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.

  Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army

  Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray,

  But nothing happens.

  Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.

  Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,

  With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause and renew,

  We watch them wandering up and down the wind’s nonchalance,

  But nothing happens.

  II

  Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces —

  We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,

  Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,

  Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.

  Is it that we are dying?

  Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed

  With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;

  For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;

  Shutters and doors all closed: on us the doors are closed —

  We turn back to our dying.

  Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;

  Nor ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.

  For God’s invincible spring our love is made afraid;

  Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,

  For love of God seems dying.

  Tonight, this frost will fasten on this mud and us,

  Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.

  The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp,

  Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,

  But nothing happens.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  A New Heaven

  Seeing we never found gay fairyland

  (Though still we crouched by bluebells moon by moon)

  And missed the tide of Lethe; yet are soon

  For that new bridge that leaves old Styx half-spanned;

  Nor ever unto Mecca caravanned;

  Nor bugled Asgard, skilled in magic rune;

  Nor yearned for far Nirvana, the sweet swoon,

  And from high Paradise are cursed and banned;

  -Let’s die home, ferry across the Channel! Thus

  Shall we live gods there. Death shall be no sev’rance.

  Weary cathedrals light new shrines for us.

  To us, rough knees of boys shall ache with rev’rence.

  Are not girls’ breasts a clear, strong Acropole?

  -There our oun mothers’ tears shall heal us whole.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Happiness

  Ever again to breathe pure happiness,

  So happy that we gave away our toy?

  We smiled at nothings, needing no caress?

  Have we not laughed too often since with Joy?

  Have we not stolen too strange and sorrowful wrongs

  For her hands’ pardoning? The sun may cleanse,

  And time, and starlight. Life will sing great songs,

  And gods will show us pleasures more than men’s.

  Yet heaven looks smaller than the old doll’s-home,

  No nestling place is left in bluebell bloom,

  And the wide arms of trees have lost their scope.

  The former happiness is unreturning:

  Boys’ griefs are not so grievous as our yearning,

  Boys have no sadness sadder than our hope.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Beauty

  The beautiful, the fair, the elegant,

  Is that which pleases us, says Kant,

  Without a thought of interest or advantage.

  I used to watch men when they spoke of beauty

  And measure their enthusiasm. One

  An old man, seeing a ( ) setting sun,

  Praised it ( ) a certain sense of duty

  To the calm evenin
g and his time of life.

  I know another man that never says a Beauty

  But of a horse; ( )

  Men seldom speak of beauty, beauty as such,

  Not even lovers think about it much.

  Women of course consider it for hours

  In mirrors; ( )

  A shrapnel ball -

  Just where the wet skin glistened when he swam -

  Like a fully-opened sea-anemone.

  We both said ‘What a beauty! What a beauty, lad’

  I knew that in that flower he saw a hope

  Of living on, and seeing again the roses of his home.

  Beauty is that which pleases and delights,

  Not bringing personal advantage - Kant.

  But later on I heard

  A canker worked into that crimson flower

  And that he sank with it

  And laid it with the anemones off Dover.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Anthem For Doomed Youth

  What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

  Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

  Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle

  Can patter out their hasty orisons.

  No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;

  Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,

  The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

  And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

  What candles may be held to speed them all?

  Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

  Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.

  The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;

  Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

  And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  I Know The Music

  All sounds have been as music to my listening:

  Pacific lamentations of slow bells,

  The crunch of boots on blue snow rosy-glistening,

  Shuffle of autumn leaves; and all farewells:

  Bugles that sadden all the evening air,

  And country bells clamouring their last appeals

  Before [the] music of the evening prayer;

  Bridges, sonorous under carriage wheels.

  Gurgle of sluicing surge through hollow rocks,

  The gluttonous lapping of the waves on weeds,

  Whisper of grass; the myriad-tinkling flocks,

  The warbling drawl of flutes and shepherds’ reeds.

  The orchestral noises of October nights

  Blowing ( ) symphonetic storms

  Of startled clarions ( )

  Drums, rumbling and rolling thunderous and ( ).

  Thrilling of throstles in the keen blue dawn,

  Bees fumbling and fuming over sainfoin-fields.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Mental Cases

  Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?

  Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,

  Drooping tongues from jays that slob their relish,

  Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ teeth wicked?

  Stroke on stroke of pain,- but what slow panic,

  Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?

  Ever from their hair and through their hands’ palms

  Misery swelters. Surely we have perished

  Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

  -These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.

  Memory fingers in their hair of murders,

  Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.

  Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,

  Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.

  Always they must see these things and hear them,

  Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,

  Carnage incomparable, and human squander

  Rucked too thick for these men’s extrication.

  Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented

  Back into their brains, because on their sense

  Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black;

  Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.

  -Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,

  Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.

  -Thus their hands are plucking at each other;

  Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;

  Snatching after us who smote them, brother,

  Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  The Last Laugh

  ‘Oh! Jesus Christ! I’m hit,’ he said; and died.

  Whether he vainly cursed or prayed indeed,

  The Bullets chirped-In vain, vain, vain!

  Machine-guns chuckled,-Tut-tut! Tut-tut!

  And the Big Gun guffawed.

  Another sighed,-’O Mother, -Mother, - Dad!’

  Then smiled at nothing, childlike, being dead.

  And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud

  Leisurely gestured,-Fool!

  And the splinters spat, and tittered.

  ‘My Love!’ one moaned. Love-languid seemed his mood,

  Till slowly lowered, his whole faced kissed the mud.

  And the Bayonets’ long teeth grinned;

  Rabbles of Shells hooted and groaned;

  And the Gas hissed.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Strange Meeting

  It seemed that out of the battle I escaped

  Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

  Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.

  Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

  Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

  Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

  With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,

  Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.

  And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;

  By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

  With a thousand fears that vision’s face was grained;

  Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,

  And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.

  ‘Strange, friend,’ I said, ‘Here is no cause to mourn.’

  ‘None,’ said the other, ‘Save the undone years,

  The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,

  Was my life also; I went hunting wild

  After the wildest beauty in the world,

  Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,

  But mocks the steady running of the hour,

  And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.

  For by my glee might many men have laughed,

  And of my weeping something has been left,

  Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,

  The pity of war, the pity war distilled.

  Now men will go content with what we spoiled.

  Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.

  They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,

  None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.

  Courage was mine, and I had mystery;

  Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;

  To miss the march of this retreating world

  Into vain citadels that are not walled.

  Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels

  I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,

  Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.

  I would have poured my spirit without stint

  But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.

  Foreheads of men
have bled where no wounds were.

  I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

  I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned

  Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

  I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

  Let us sleep now ...

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Futility

  MOVE him into the sun —

  Gently its touch awoke him once,

  At home, whispering of fields unsown.

  Always it woke him, even in France,

  Until this morning and this snow.

  If anything might rouse him now

  The kind old sun will know.

  Think how it wakes the seeds —

  Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.

  Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides

  Full-nerved, — still warm, — too hard to stir?

  Was it for this the clay grew tall?

  — O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

  To break earth’s sleep at all?

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Edwin Arlington Robinson

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  The Valley of the Shadow

  THERE were faces to remember in the Valley of the Shadow,

  There were faces unregarded, there were faces to forget;

  There were fires of grief and fear that are a few forgotten ashes,

  There were sparks of recognition that are not forgotten yet.