
The songs I had are withered Or vanished clean. Yet there are bright tracks Where I have been.
Ivor Gurney
The songs I had are withered Or vanished clean. Yet there are bright tracks Where I have been.
Ivor Gurney
with his words
in my head
I slept for thirty
or forty forevers
while the grass shrieked
and the trees tremored…Deborah Landau
Sonnet – September 1922
by Ivor Gurney
Fierce indignation is best understood by those
Who have time or no fear, or a hope in its real good.
One loses it with a filed soul or in sentimental mood.
Anger is gone with sunset, or flows as flows
The water in easy mill-runs; the earth that ploughs
Forgets protestation in its turning, the rood
Prepares, considers, fulfils; and the poppy’s blood
Makes old the old changing of the headland’s brows.
But the toad under the harrow toadiness
Is known to forget, and even the butterfly
Has doubts of wisdom when that clanking thing goes by
And’s not distressed. A twisted thing keeps still –
That thing easier twisted than a grocer’s bill –
And no history of November keeps the guy.
Ford Madox Ford (1873 – 1939)
“Yes, a war is inevitable. Firstly, there’s you fellows who can’t be trusted. And then there’s the multitude who mean to have bathrooms and white enamel. Millions of them; all over the world. Not merely here. And there aren’t enough bathrooms and white enamel in the world to go round.”
Ford Maddox Ford, Parade’s End
By Ivor Gurney
Now, youth, the hour of thy dread passion comes;
Thy lovely things must all be laid away;
And thou, as others, must face the riven day
Unstirred by rattle of the rolling drums,
Or bugles’ strident cry. When mere noise numbs
The sense of being, the sick soul doth sway,
Remember thy great craft’s honour, that they may say
Nothing in shame of poets. Then the crumbs
Of praise the little versemen joyed to take
Shall be forgotten; then they must know we are,
For all our skill in words, equal in might
And strong of mettle as those we honoured; make
The name of poet terrible in just war,
And like a crown of honour upon the fight.
Is war inevitable? Is it a terrible cancer of the human condition? Is it inevitable that the outcome of viewing those as different than ourselves, the “other” who obstructs our path to obtaining our objectives eventually becomes our enemy? I hope not. I lean towards a pacifist mindset that we can do better as a species. I find the current predicament of glorification of military service as something that gets more attention than preventing conflict in the first place a contradiction of good leadership. If we want to praise open communication, conflict resolution and peace keeping in our communities and schools, then why can’t we do the same across nations?
I find interesting Gurney’s idea of the role of “little verse men” in making sense of the aftermath of war. Equal in might is pen to the sword is not a new concept, nor is the poet warrior. Both concepts have been around for thousands of years. But why isn’t there equally as strong a history in literature of poetry of peace, poetry of arbitration, the poetry of negotiation and truce? Poet peace makers rather than poet soldiers. Writing in muddy, blood stained notebooks may sound more noble than a peace keepers reasoned speech, but which takes more courage?
by Ford Madox Ford
Let me wait, my dear,
One more day,
Let me linger near,
Let me stay.
Do not bar the gate or draw the blind
Or lock the door that yields,
Dear, be kind!
I have only you beneath the skies
To rest my eyes
From the cruel green of the fields
And the cold, white seas
And the weary hills
And the naked trees.
I have known the hundred ills
Of the hated wars.
Do not close the bars,
Or draw the blind.
I have only you beneath the stars:
Dear, be kind!
A sense of beauty is every hindrance to a soldier; yet there would be no soldiers – or none such soldier had not men dead and living cherished and handed on the sacred fire.
Ivor Gurney
by Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915)
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust who England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives Somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Severn River, Wales
by Ivor Gurney
He’s gone, and all our plans
are useless indeed.
We’ll walk no more on Cotswolds
Where the sheep feed
Quietly and take no heed.
His body that was so quick
Is not as you
Knew it, on Severn River
Under the blue
Driving our small boat through.
You would not know him now…
But still he died
Nobly, so cover him over
With violets of pride
Purple from Severn side.
Cover him, cover him soon!
And with thick-set
Masses of memoried flowers –
Hide that red wet
Thing I must somehow forget.