When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.
2
O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night–O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear’d–O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless–O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.
3
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle–and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.
4
In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
Solitary the thrush,
The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song.
Song of the bleeding throat,
Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,
If thou wast not granted to sing thou wouldist surely die.)
5
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d
from the ground, spotting the gray debris,
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the
endless grass,
Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the
dark-brown fields uprisen,
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
Night and day journeys a coffin.
Here under the rays of the sun
Where everything grows so vividly
In the human mind and in the heart,
Love, life, and all else so beautifully,
I think again of men as innocent as I am
Pent in a cold unjust walk between steel bars,
Their trousers slit for the electrodes
And their hair cut for the cap
Because of the unconcern of men and women,
Respectable and respected and professedly Christian,
Idle-busy among the flowers of their gardens here
Under the gay-tipped rays of the sun.
And I am suddenly completely bereft
Of la grande amitié des choses créés,
The unity of life which can only be forged by love
When the summer fields are mown,
When the birds are fledged and flown,
And the dry leaves strew the path;
With the falling of the snow,
With the cawing of the crow,
Once again the fields we mow
And gather in the aftermath.
Not the sweet, new grass with flowers
Is this harvesting of ours;
Not the upland clover bloom;
But the rowen mixed with weeds,
Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,
Where the poppy drops its seeds
In the silence and the gloom.
Man dies too soon, beside his works half-planned.
His days are counted and reprieve is vain:
Who shall entreat with Death to stay his hand;
Or cloke the shameful nakedness of pain?
Send here the bold, the seekers of the way–
The passionless, the unshakeable of soul,
Who serve the inmost mysteries of man’s clay,
And ask no more than leave to make them whole.
According to an article by the United Kingdom’s Metro,
“Poetry is in danger of dying out. More than eight in ten Britons cannot recite a verse by heart, a study shows.”
In comparison with older generations the article states that:
In fact, it is only the over-60s who can remember verses – with 72 per cent able to deliver lines they learned as children. Two-thirds know entire poems – with Wilfred Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est (It Is Sweet And Right) most popular.
DULCE ET DECORUM EST (It is sweet and proper)
by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Jesse Ventura (Navy Seal, Wrestler, and Minnesota Governor from 1999-2003) was on Larry King last Monday night giving commentary on the White House Correspondence Dinner, the disputed Minnesota Senate election, and other things. It appeared Ventura wanted to say his quip of poetry very badly, as he mentioned it three times during his interview.
On the night that Jesus Christ supposedly rose from the dead,
The Navy SEALS shot three pirates straight through the head.
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
If you would like to hear Stevie Smith read her poem, the BBC has a copy here. Also Poemhunter has a collection of Stevie Smith poems availible as a PDF download here.
Who doesn’t enjoy history, so much of it surrounds war. For some war might be enjoyable, for the unaccustomed it might even look entertaining. War, however, is not such the case. Perhaps Louis Simpson is in such a caliber to speak of war, as he fought in World War II during the Battle of the Bulge.
This poem presumed to have been written 10 years after the battle, “most clearly of that battle I remember the tiredness in eyes, how hands looked thin”. Right from the beginning you can feel a beat a rhythm. Similar to the poem Drum (Hughes). ”Helmet and rifle, pack and overcoat.”
The entire poem is bifurcated in that each line is split with either: and, comma, or period. This leads to a natural cadences for the reader, you can almost imagine a fast pacing drum that would be used to keep the troops at the correct pace. Helmet and rifle …pause… pack and overcoat is how it might be read.
If this poem was given popular culture treatment you might hear it being recited as a soldier walks through the woods in war time France, the sound of mortars or artillery off in the distance draws the soldier back to the trenches. With the sound of gunfire, the soldier drifts to sleep, and the camera fades to black. Starting from white, color fades in with ringing of the ears, corpses on the ground, and snow of black and red.
I could not decide as to what circumstance this poem might be heard or told. At first we thought maybe at the bar with his buddies, other veterans, and the like. However going back to the poem, the only use of pronouns is They, and Their. That language alone has to mean that this kind of poem had no audience at least not to those who were there and experienced it for themselves. (more…)
Yesterday I spoke of visiting the Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. One of Kennedy’s favorite poems was I have a Rendezvous with Death by Alan Seeger. The poem is a reminder of his grim fate while stuck at sea and later marooned on the remote Salomon Islands during World War II. It’s always interesting to find poems of the past, in this case 1916 reused in modern culture.
Last year Gears of War 2 was released for the XBOX 360. The great marketing people at Microsoft Publishing Studios and Epic Games used an abridged version of Alan Seeger’s poem to describe the game. The trailer known as Rendezvous with its eerie narration brings this 90 year old poem back to life in a new light.
Youtube: ”Rendezvous Trailer”
The official trailer from Microsoft is also availible in 720p is availble here.
Copyright 2009 by James McGowan. Photos are Copyright by their respective owners, they are listed as Creative Commons, out of copyright, attributed, or my own.
