Lyr Add: War poetry

Subject: Lyr Add: MENTAL CASES (Wilfred Owen)
From: AliUK
Date: 13 Oct 01 - 06:36 PM

Here's another Owen this one without a Latin title, but one that scared the hell out of me when I first read it. The line "Dawn breaks open like a wound afresh" conjures up so many images, the language is particularly resonant:


Mental Cases

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, -- but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hand 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 bloodsmear; 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.

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Gareth
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 06:28 PM

Walrus

Repeating Keiths post

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS! From: Paul from Hull Date: 12-Oct-01 - 09:33 AM

That line rang bells for me as soon as you posted it, Gareth..... & I had no more success in tracking it down on the 'net than you probably did.....

Good on yer, Walrus!

Now going to try & find an Oysterband Discography so's I can track down that Houseman poem!

Thanks Ian C!!!

CONCUR !

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 02:44 PM

Re Sassoon, he was badly wounded twice and awarded the Military Cross for gallantry. He began his anti war protests while recovering in England, and was assumed to have gone mad. During this time he befriended Wilfred Owen, andwas responsible for first publishing Owen's work.
A simple (elderly) soldier boy,
Keith.

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Steve in Idaho
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 01:16 PM

AliUK - There are some Viet Nam poetry books out there - although they weren't published in any great quantity - and one that comes to mind is "Childhood, Manhood, Namhood" by Michael Pick. Mike is a long time friend and served a couple of tours with Marine Recon.

In DelVecchio's book "The 13th Valley" is a very good poem that several of us put to music. Again - the poem, nor us vets that put it to music, has been very widely disseminated. Another quite good one is Joseph DelQuaglio's - dang - can't recall the title right now!

I have all three of these - if you are a serious student of the venue I would be willing to loan them to you. Two of these books are the first book - #1 of the first edition and autographed - so would like some assurance that they would be returned to me. The poem out of 13th Valley is really quite good. If anyone recalls the ABC TV program "First Camera" - its last show was about three of us who were living in the backcountry of Idaho - the background music is me singing and playing this song.

Steve

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Paul from Hull
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 09:33 AM

That line rang bells for me as soon as you posted it, Gareth..... & I had no more success in tracking it down on the 'net than you probably did.....

Good on yer, Walrus!

Now going to try & find an Oysterband Discography so's I can track down that Houseman poem!

Thanks Ian C!!!

Subject: Lyr Add: GRENADIER (A. E. Housman)
From: IanC
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 09:08 AM

Your old Shropshire Lad A. E. Housman had something to say as well.

GRENADIER
A. E. Housman
(?set to music by "The Oyster Band")

The Queen she sent to look for me,
The sergeant he did say,
`Young man, a soldier will you be
For thirteen pence a day?'

For thirteen pence a day did I
Take off the things I wore,
And I have marched to where I lie,
And I shall march no more.

My mouth is dry, my shirt is wet,
My blood runs all away,
So now I shall not die in debt
For thirteen pence a day.

To-morrow after new young men
The sergeant he must see,
For things will all be over then
Between the Queen and me.

And I shall have to bate my price,
For in the grave, they say,
Is neither knowledge nor device
Nor thirteen pence a day.

from "Last Poems" (1922)

Subject: Lyr Add: SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES (S Sassoon)
From: The Walrus at work
Date: 12 Oct 01 - 08:29 AM

Gareth,

It's from Sassoon's "Suicide in the trenches" :

SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES
By Siegfried Sassoon

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

Walrus

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Max Tone
Date: 11 Oct 01 - 08:08 PM

Jeez,
My mind's on sensory overload with all the songs on this, and the anti-war song thread. I'll take them all in, eventually.......

If Gas! Gas! got you to this thread, try Oil, Oil, as well, here - The Hypoctritical Song - for today's cynical look on the ulterior motives of war.
Rob

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: AliUK
Date: 11 Oct 01 - 07:48 PM

Norton: Not ever having seen combat I wouldn't presume to try to tell anyone who has what it's like. The think about Owen's poems and a great many others who actually saw the shit( I imagine) that the battlefield really is, can give us non-combatants a taste of what it's like. I have yet to come across Vietnam poetry though I would like to see that perspective, and Desert Storm is another that has never been written about. I suppose that with CNN showing things up close, the poetry would be superfluous.

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Gareth
Date: 11 Oct 01 - 07:18 PM

From where ??

"I pray that you will never know,
That hell where youth and friendship go"

As snipet that has been in my mind for years - source ?? Author ??

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Steve in Idaho
Date: 11 Oct 01 - 06:19 PM

I also nearly passed this one. Probably should have considering my state of mind. Reminds me of one of my early English literature classes - discussions of poems by some who couldn't relate. But were seriously trying to envision what those eyes had seen.

Kind of like my Colonel, the worst thing that has ever happened to him is his leave being canceled due to the war starting. He cried about that. Then asked me if I'd been close to people getting killed.

It's as tough a question for combat vets as "Did you kill anyone?" Leaves the minds eye focused in a not so good space.

I guess I'd say the casualness of the lines - what he was seeing in the gassed man's face - was as important as someone losing their boots. It all gets a little blury to me. And in those times what is important is casual in a sense. I really liked that first poem. It struck me as real. And that he recalled it so clearly and was able to put that into other's minds and hearts. What a gift.

Steve

Subject: Lyr Add: HOW LONG, OH LORD? (Robert Palmer)
From: The Walrus
Date: 11 Oct 01 - 05:56 PM

Maybe I'm in a maudlin mood at the moment, but some how, one month on from the WTC, during a bombing campaign, and with bloody threats being made and the possibility of a long war, this poem seems appropriate:

HOW LONG, OH LORD?
Robert Palmer

How long, Oh Lord, how long before the flood
Of crimson-welling carnage shall abate?
From sodden plains in West and East the blood
Of kindly men streams up in mists of hate,
Polluting Thy clean air: and nations great
In reputation of the arts that bind
The world with hopes of Heaven, sink into the state
Of brute barbarians whose ferocious mind
Gloats o'er the blood havoc of their kind,
Not knowing love or mercy, Lord, how long
Shall Satan in high places lead the blind
To battle for the passions of the strong?
Oh touch Thy children's hearts, that they may know
Hate their most hateful, pride their deadliest foe.

(Palmer was KIA 1916)

Walrus

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Paul from Hull
Date: 11 Oct 01 - 10:15 AM

refresh, cos its not exactly BS, as such, & its worth 'keeping in play'

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: AliUK
Date: 10 Oct 01 - 09:45 AM

thanks Brian ;O)

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: GUEST,Brian
Date: 10 Oct 01 - 08:25 AM

The blue clickys haven't worked, so I'll post the addresses without trying to be clever.

http://www.inch.com/~kdka/public_html/r~service.html http://www.ude.net/service/service.html

Brian

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: GUEST,Brian
Date: 10 Oct 01 - 08:21 AM

AliUK. I did a web search and found loads references. These should be enough to get you started.

Brian

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: AliUK
Date: 09 Oct 01 - 07:34 PM

I need to get my authors sorted out :o(~ . Not read much Robert Service, any good links?

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: GUEST,Brian
Date: 09 Oct 01 - 09:23 AM

AliUK. A Shropshire Lad was A.E Houseman.

Having read through this thread, it appears no one has mentioned Robert W. Service. He was perhaps better known for his non wartime poems but 'Rhymes of a Red Cross Man' is worth reading.

Brian

Subject: Lyr Add: APOLOGIA PRO POEMATE MEO (Wilfred Owen)
From: AliUK
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 09:18 PM

Maybe just to get this thread back onto Owen for a bit, by the way the Kipling and Sassoon sites are excellent. Here's another one by the "Shropshire Lad" (yeah I know that was actually Somerset Maugham). I found this one almost as haunting as Dulce et Decorum est...


APOLOGIA PRO POEMATE MEO

I, too, saw God through mud–
    The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
    War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
    And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

Merry it was to laugh there–
    Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.
    For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
    Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.

I, too, have dropped off fear–
    Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,
    And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear
    Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;

And witnessed exultation–
    Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,
    Shine and lift up with passion of oblation,
    Seraphic for an hour; though they were foul.

I have made fellowships–
    Untold of happy lovers in old song.
  For love is not the binding of fair lips
    With the soft silk of eyes that look and long,

By Joy, whose ribbon slips,–
    But wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong;
    Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips;
    Knit in the welding of the rifle-thong.

I have perceived much beauty
    In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
    Heard music in the silentness of duty;
    Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.

Nevertheless, except you share
    With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
    Whose world is but the trembling of a flare,
    And heaven but as the highway for a shell,

You shall not hear their mirth:
    You shall not come to think them well content
    By any jest of mine.  These men are worth
    Your tears:  You are not worth their merriment.

~November~ 1917.

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: GUEST,AliUK on the works comp.
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 05:02 PM

I agree with Micca that the jingoism of Kipling is in and of it's time. Thoroughly, we cannot judge him by our standards today. That's why he's not only a great poet but also a wonderful writer, for a connection with Afgahnistan, just read "The Man Who Would be King" ( also see the fantastic movie with Sean Connery and Michael Caine, Plain Tales from the Hills and his childrens books, the most underated and most often ignored being "Puck of Pook's Hill" a delightful history lesson for children of all ages. I still have a well thumbed copy that I brought from England with me.

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Deda
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 03:48 PM

Sorry -- I figured out how to turn on the bold, but not how to turn it off. :o[

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Deda
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 03:46 PM

Well, for poetry it sure doesn't compare to the earlier posts. This was pure schmaltz. But it's interesting that there even was any anti-war protest music in WWI, which was more generally accompanied by songs like "Over there", rah rah pep songs.

Subject: Lyr Add: I DIDN'T RAISE MY BOY TO BE A SOLDIER
From: Paul from Hull
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 01:32 PM

Found it in the Database:

I DIDN'T RAISE MY BOY TO BE A SOLDIER

Ten million soldiers to the war have gone
Who may never return again,
Ten million mothers' hearts must break
For the ones who died in vain.
Head bowed down in sorrow
In her lonely years
I hears a mother murmur thro' her tears.

cho: I didn't raise my boy to be soldier
I brought him up to be my pride and joy
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder
To shoot some other mother's darling boy?
Let nations arbitrate their future troubles
It's time to lay the sword and gun away,
There'd be no war today
If mothers all would say:
"I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier."

What victory can cheer a mother's heart
When she looks at her blighted home?
What victory can bring her back
All she cared to call her own?
Let each mother answer
In the years to be
Remember that my boy belongs to me!

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Deda
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 12:49 PM

Another father who lost a son and whose view of war was never the same thereafter was Teddy Roosevelt. There was an early (WWI) war-protest song called "I didn't raise my son to be a soldier" (chorus below); when TR heard it he thought it ridiculous, infra dig. He said something like, "You might as well say 'I didn't raise my girl to be a mother'" implying, as he then seemed to believe, that soldiering was the inevitable destiny of men, and mothering that of women. After his son was killed, he began to wonder if he hadn't over-glorified war all along. He never really recovered from that loss, and died in his early 50s from effects of malaria, I believe.

I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier
I raised him up to be my pride and joy
Who dares to put a musket to his shoulder
To kill some other mother's darling boy
Let nations arbitrate their future troubles
(Line ??? Sorry, I've lost it)
There'd be no war today
If mothers all would say
I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier.

Subject: Lyr Add: VERGISSMEINNICHT (Keith Douglas)
From: A Wandering Minstrel
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 11:30 AM

In a similar vein but from WWII. This always makes my neck hair rise!

VERGISSMEINNICHT

Three weeks gone and the combatants gone
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.

The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.

Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
the dishonoured picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht
in a copybook gothic script.

We see him almost with content,
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that's hard and good when he's decayed.

But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.

For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.

Keith Douglas (Killed in Normandy, 1944)

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: GUEST,micca at work
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 06:53 AM

I too am a great admirer of Wilfred Owen, so much so there is a direct complete line quote from him in a song I wrote that is in the Songbook !!
I find with Kipling that it is easy to laugh at his patriotism and Jingoistic style but he was "in and of his time" and it is hard to keep the context straight.. he has however written some of the most(IMHO) memorable poetry of the 19/20 century!!
He was a Journalist in India during the Empire and used his journalists interviewing and note taking to record and then write his stories.. and damned good reading they are, if you can remember and accept the context in which he wrote.

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 08 Oct 01 - 01:58 AM

Do I like Kipling? I don't know I've never Kippled....

'In Flanders Field' has the merit of actually being written 'in situ', on the back step of an ambulance after one of the Ypres offensives in May 1915. Many of the others were written whilst in barracks or (in at least one case - remember the Ballad of Reading Gaol wasn't written in gaol, or even in Reading) safe at home away from the hell that was the Salient.

And if your fellow countrymen are having the crap bombed out of them then a little jingoism is bound to creep in.. take a look at some of the recent threads re:WTC 11/09. That's jingoism at its worst because those propagating it have probably never had to do anything more traumatic than remember that 'O say can you see' doesn't end with the words 'play ball!'

LTS

Subject: Lyr Add: THE HOLY WAR (Rudyard Kipling)
From: Willa
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 06:43 PM

Willa
Beat me to it, Walrus. Next one in my book is :
THE HOLY WAR
Begins
A Tinker out of Bedford,
A vagrant oft in quod,
A private under Fairfax,
A minister of God-
Two hundred years and thirty
Ere Armaggedon came
His single hand portrayed it,
And Bunyan was his name!
and ends:
A pedlar from a hovel,
The lowest of the low-
Father of the novel,
Salvation's first Defoe-
Eight blinded generations
Ere Armaggedon came,
He showed us how to meet it,
And Bunyan was his name!

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Gareth
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 06:41 PM

Walrus - Thanks for that alternative Kipling site, you are probably correct Brooke never made it to Gallipoli. Though I would suggerst that he was as much of a victim as the ANZACs, or the Lancashire Fusilliers on th "River Clyde"

I would class Brooke as a War romantic, and the less said about the Armchair Patriots, poets and songwriters the better - And that goes for Ivor Novello as much as anybody.

Funny thing, well not so funny, is that in left wing circles Kipling is decried as a chauvenistic reacialist. I normally ask them if they have read any Kipling - The answer is usually NO!

Its too long to post and format but those in doubt should read McAndrews Hymn.

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Paul from Hull
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 05:34 PM

..& of course, it IS on the site you posted!

*looks sheepish*

Ali... *G*

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Paul from Hull
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 05:22 PM

Thanks Walrus! YES!

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: AliUK
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 05:22 PM

The charge of Jingoism I think was first made by me, about some of the First world war poets. Owen certainly had his finger on the pulse of the common soldier, and probably covered in a fair bit of it as well. Kipling was a chronicler who spoke to everybody, a habitual scribbler-down of conversations, wether with a maharaja or a squaddie. Read his Plain Tales from the Hills which are wonderfully vivid in their descriptions of Empire era India. ( Oh God! I'm contributing to thread-creep on the thread I started) :o)

Subject: Lyr Add: ET DONA FERENTES (Rudyard Kipling)
From: The Walrus
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 05:18 PM

Paul,

Is this the one?


ET DONA FERENTES
1896

Rudyard Kipling


IN EXTENDED observation of the ways and works of man,
From the Four-mile Radius roughly to the Plains of Hindustan:
I have drunk with mixed assemblies, seen the racial ruction rise,
And the men of half Creation damning half Creation's eyes.

I have watched them in their tantrums, all that pentecostal crew,
French, Italian, Arab, Spaniard, Dutch and Greek, and Russ and Jew,
Celt and savage, buff and ochre, cream and yellow, mauve and white;
But it never really mattered till the English grew polite;

Till the men with polished toppers, till the men in long frockcoats,
Till the men who do not duel, till the men who war with votes,
Till the breed that take their pleasures as Saint Lawrence took his grid,
Began to "beg your pardon" and—the knowing croupier hid.

Then the bandsmen with their fiddles, and the girls that bring the beer,
Felt the psychologic moment, left the lit casino clear;
But the uninstructed alien, from the Teuton to the Gaul,
Was entrapped, once more, my country, by that suave, deceptive drawl.

. . . . . . .

As it was in ancient Suez or 'neath wilder, milder skies,
I "observe with apprehension" when the racial ructions rise;
And with keener apprehension, if I read the times aright,
Hear the old casino order: "Watch your man, but be polite.

"Keep your temper. Never answer (that was why they spat and swore).
Don't hit first, but move together (there's no hurry) to the door.
Back to back, and facing outward while the linguist tells 'em how—
"Nous sommes allong ah notre batteau, nous ne voulong pas un row."'

So the hard, pent rage ate inward, till some idiot went too far...
"Let'em have it!" and they had it, and the same was merry war.
Fist, umbrella, cane, decanter, lamp and beer-mug, chair and boot—
Till behind the fleeing legions rose the long, hoarse yell for loot.

Then the oil-cloth with its numbers, like a banner fluttered free;
Then the grand piano cantered, on three castors, down the quay;
White, and breathing through their nostrils, silent, systematic, swift—
They removed, effaced, abolished all that man could heave or lift.

Oh, my country, bless the training that from cot to castle runs—
The pitfall of the stranger but the bulwark of thy sons—
Measured speech and ordered action, sluggish soul and unperturbed,
Till we wake our Island-Devil—nowise cool for being curbed!

When the heir of all the ages "has the honour to remain,"
When he will not hear an insult, though men make it ne'er so plain,
When his lips are schooled to meekness. when his back is bowed to blows
Well the keen aas-vogels know it—well the waiting jackal knows.

Build on the flanks of Etna where the sullen smoke-puffs float—
Or bathe in tropic waters where the lean fin dogs the boat—
Cock the gun that is not loaded, cook the frozen dynamite—
But oh, beware my Country, when my Country grows polite!

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Paul from Hull
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 05:07 PM

Its a bit of a thread creep, sorry....but we are getting a bit 'diverse' on this one anyway, but neither of those sites have the Kipling poem that includes the lines:

"Beware my Country when my Country grows polite"

& I cant remember its actual title, nor can I lay my hands on the book of Kiplings verse I've got that I KNOW has it in. Web Searches havent helped, though I've tried various lines from it.

Anyone help?

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: The Walrus
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 04:52 PM

Gareth,

Just two quick points.

I don't think Rupert Brooke even made it as far as Galipoli, did he? I seem to recall that he died without ever reaching there.

Second, I think that you'll find
http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/index.html

is a better sourse for Kipling verse, The "Complete" Kipling (on the Poetry Lover's Page) simply isn't - a number of the verses and all the epitaphs are missing.

Walrus

Subject: Lyr Add: THE CHILDREN (Rudyard Kipling)
From: The Walrus
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 04:47 PM

Mention of Kipling brings to mind one of his most bitter poems, obviously influenced by the loss of Jack (and published post war of course) which, I think sums up the feelings of many after the conflict, and I fear may be felt by many more.

THE CHILDREN
1917
Rudyard Kipling

THESE were our children who died for our lands: they were dear in our sight.
    We have only the memory left of their home-treasured sayings and laughter.
    The price of our loss shall be paid to our hands, not another's hereafter.
Neither the Alien nor Priest shall decide on it. That is our right.
            But who shall return us the children?

At the hour the Barbarian chose to disclose his pretences,
    And raged against Man, they engaged, on the breasts that they bared for us,
    The first felon-stroke of the sword he had long-time prepared for us—
Their bodies were all our defense while we wrought our defenses.

They bought us anew with their blood, forbearing to blame us,
Those hours which we had not made good when the judgment o'ercame us.
They believed us and perished for it. Our statecraft, our learning
Delivered them bound to the Pit and alive to the burning
Whither they mirthfully hastened as jostling for honour—
Not since her birth has our Earth seen such worth loosed upon her.

Nor was their agony brief, or once only imposed on them.
    The wounded, the war-spent, the sick received no exemption
    Being cured they returned and endured and achieved our redemption,
Hopeless themselves of relief, till Death, marvelling, closed on them.

That flesh we had nursed from the first in all cleanness was given
To corruption unveiled and assailed by the malice of Heaven—
By the heart-shaking jests of Decay where it lolled on the wires—
To be blanched or gay-painted by fumes—to be cindered by fires—
To be senselessly tossed and retossed in stale mutilation
From crater to crater. For this we shall take expiation.
            But who shall return us our children?

Walrus

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 04:43 PM

Thanks Willa. I often sing Soldier Soldier, Road To Mandalay and Screw Guns, and sometimes Gunga Din. I thought the charge of jingoism was being made against the war poets, but it got a bit confused for a while back there. Kippling is not really known for his Great War poems but he wrote some good ones about naval patrolling.
Ow's yer soul?
Keith.

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Paul from Hull
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 04:17 PM

*S*

I have to admit, I've never actually got around to reading the 'Just So' stories. I certainly SHOULD though.

Nor have I got into Seamus Heaney, but I liked what you posted.

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Willa
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 04:06 PM

Hi, Paul; I'm fine. Went to Nellie's today. Ickle, Les and Maggie, Bill and Brid Widder were there too. I have 'The Complete Kipling'(verse), and many of his stories; can still remember sitting spellbound listening to the 'Just So Stories'. *BG*

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Paul from Hull
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 03:52 PM

Thanks Willa! How are you, m'dear? *S*

- I think a lot of Kipling stuff was very much pointing up the 'plight' & the suffering of the ('licentious') & common Soldiery..& 'Tommy' (which is what Gareth posted above, for those that dont know) is a pretty good example of that.

Considering he (Kipling) never served in the Army, he had a good grasp of how Soldiers thought & felt, I.M.O.

Subject: Lyr Add: A DOG WAS CRYING TONIGHT IN WICKLOW ALSO
From: Willa
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 03:42 PM

Clinton
This from Seamus Heaney
A DOG WAS CRYING TONIGHT IN WICKLOW ALSO (in memory of Donatus Nwoga)

When human beings found out about death
They sent the dog to Chukwu with a message:
They wanted to be let back into the house of life.
They didn't want to end up lost for ever
Like burnt wood disappearing into smoke
Or ashes that got blown away into nothing.
Instead they saw their souls in a flock at twilight
Cawing and heading back for the same old roosts
And the same bright airs and wing-stretchings each morning.
Death would be like a night spent in the wood:
At first light they'd be back in the house of life.
(The dog was meant to tell all this to Chukwu).

But death and human beings took second place
When he trotted off the path and started barking
At another dog in broad daylight just barking
Back at him from the far bank of a river.

And that is how the toad reached Chukwu first,
The toad who'd overheard in the beginning
What the dog was meant to tell. 'Human beings,' he said
(And here the toad was trusted absolutely),
'Human beings want death to last forever.'

Then Chukwu saw the people's souls in birds
Coming towards him like black spots off the sunset
To a place where there would be neither roosts nor trees
Nor any way back to the house of life.
And his mind reddened and darkened all at once
And nothing that the dog would tell him later
Couuld change that vision. Great chiefs and great loves
In obliterated light, the toad in mud,
The dog crying all night behind the corpse house.

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Willa
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 03:12 PM

Brooke died of blood poisonong on the way to the Dardanelles, but had earlier been involved in military action.

Subject: Lyr Add: TOMMY (Rudyard Kipling)
From: Gareth
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 02:48 PM

Possibly Keith, but Kipling's earlier works were very much devoted to the common man - And very much in the general mood of the times.

Try this one

TOMMY

I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:
    O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
    But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,
    The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
    O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!
    For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside";
    But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide,
    The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
    O it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
    Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
    But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
    The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
    O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;
    While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind",
    But it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind,
    There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
    O it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
    For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
    But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
    An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
    An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 02:35 PM

Some of the songs written about the Events could be described as jingoistic. Doesn't it just show a people united against a cruel aggressor?
Keith.

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: AliUK
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 12:12 PM

yup Brooke...damn I need to pay more attention to the poets and maybe less to the poetry :o). Though I think that jingoism was a sign of the times in England at the time, what with it being the fag end of the empire days. I confess to having a weakness for Kiplings books and poetry, and I just love Buchan, and you can't get much more jingoistic than the Mr. Standfast. Very much in the vein O E.R. Burroughs though more english.

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 11:33 AM

Not bad... but I'll stick to Seamus Heanny, Milton Acorn, and Leonard Cohen for my poetry...

;-)

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Paul from Hull
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 11:15 AM

Oooopps! YES! Now you say it, of course thats right...Kiplings stuff seemed to significantly change, as I recall, after the loss of his son (that being the 'change' I was wrongly attributing to Brooke, of course) even though Kiplings WW1 stuff was significantly different to the 'Barrack-Room ballads' & other stuff about the 'Colonial Era', in my opinion anyhow.

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 11:05 AM

You must be thinking of Kippling, who lost his only son.

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Gareth
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 11:04 AM

Sorry Paul - Brooke died of disease (Typhus ?) caught at Galipolli.

Worth reading Sassoon's, Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man & Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, as well as Graves' Goodby to all That.

It was Kipling who's outlook was changed when his son was killed.

CLICK FOR THE COMPLETE KIPLING

Sasson site, with links to Wilfred Owen and Ruprt Brooke

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: GAS! GAS!
From: Paul from Hull
Date: 07 Oct 01 - 10:50 AM

Ooops..missed this bit..

I suppose I ought to look it up, but the fact (well, if I'm RIGHT in what I said) that Brooke lost his Son would certainly suggest that he didnt serve in the Military himself...