Geoffrey Dearmer

“ Their trumpets down the wind.
Each breathless day
Broke to fulfil its promise, till the May
Had fledged her clustered blooms and swung her pride
In bowing sweetness to the country side.
Beauty was born again. But now the sound
Of heavy Autumn patters to the ground,
And loud discordant booms of thunder roll
Where that enchanted owner of my soul
Lies dead, or dying, or is living still:
At last the fibres of my struggling will
Falter exhausted, and my cowering brain
Cries out in anguish like a child in pain. ”

“ Shall blossom as before when Summer blows again.
{24}
GOMMECOURT I
The wind, which heralded the blackening night,
Swirled in grey mists the sulphur-laden smoke.
From sleep, in sparkling instancy of light,
Crouched batteries like grumbling tigers woke
And stretched their iron symmetry; they hurled
Skyward with roar and boom each pregnant shell
Rumbling on tracks unseen. Such tyrants reign
The sullen masters of a mangled world,
Grim-mothered in a womb of furnaced hell,
Wrought, forged, and hammered for the work of pain. ”

“ To sweeten clouds of plume-tossed meadowsweet;
My meadow grasses nestle with the thyme
And flowering rushes tower in the heat.
Low-brushing swifts and swallows splashed with white
O’er flash my laden mirrors slow and deep
That bear swift-merging canopies of sleep.{44}
Until the growing light
Has chased marauding owls, and butterflies,
Born of blue-woven skies,
Flutter away like hare-bells spurred to flight.
But who are these? The powdered butterfly
Outshines that air leviathan that swings
In rigid curves adown the barren sky,
With cloudy satellites about her wings. ”

“ Sleep held him as a mother holds her child:
Sleep the soft calm that levels hopes and fears,
Now stilled his brain and scarfed his eyelids wild,
And sped the transient misery of tears,
Until the dawn’s sure prophets cleft the night
With opal shafts, and streamers tinged with flame,
Swift merging riot of the turbaned East.
Through rustling gesture loomed the advancing light;
Through fitful eddying winds, grey vanguards came
Rising in billowy mountains silver-fleeced. ”

“ Milk-fragrant kine, and wagons high with hay
Came lumbering. The fields were loud with bees
And drowsy with the wind-stirred meadowsweet.
From bowing trees
Fell chatter, and above the garden wall
Wide sunflowers beamed at spearing hollyhocks
That dared the wind, and scorned the clustered stocks,
And bore their laddered blooms high over all. ”

“ For six long days the common slayers played,
Till, fitfully, there boomed a heavier king,
Who, couched in leaves and branches deftly laid,
And hid in dappled colour of the spring,
Vaunted tornadoes. Far from that covered lair,
Like hidden snares the sinuous trenches lay
Mid fields where nodding poppies show their pride.{25}
The tall star-pointed streamers leap and flare,
And turn the night’s immensity to day;
Or rockets whistle in their upward ride.
II
The moment comes when thrice-embittered fire
Proclaims the prelude to the great attack. ”

“ We turn, and see the light in human eyes;
When the last echo of War’s thunder dies;
Lord, let us pause again
In silent memory.
Gallipoli, October, 1915.
{6}
FALLEN
The days shall darken and sink down to Night,
And Night shall break in the bleak dawn of Day:
The years shall dim his face, our fleeting sight
Shall see his splendid image fade away
Beyond the knowledge of our drifting thought
Which moves in circles to the source again,
Beyond dark seas with shivering stars inwrought
Beyond war-burdened men in stricken pain. ”

“ With tentacle tendrils that strangle with ease,
Of butterfly Orchis a-clamour for bees.
For Dragon may Snap you, and Sundew may trap you,
Before you have started, before you have parted
The grass at the foot of my Hollyhock trees. ”

“ Warm, passionate, and breathing. Even so
Shall Life in after years make Earth divine
And fire shall burn as long as embers glow.
But he who babbled to the wondering kine
Is dead, long dead, two thousand years ago. ”

“ They travelled, till the bloom of passing flowers
Brought tidings of the dawn. Then to his ears
Rumbled a distant thunder, sudden fears
Urged onward faster. Now the country showed
First signs of war-flung tentacles, the road
Lay pitted here and there, a wounded tree
No longer framed its lordly symmetry.
And soon the land whereon all life was stilled
Became as Man had willed. ”

“ Grass-sunken kine, and softly-hissing wheat,
Blue-misted flax, and drowsy poppy fields.
But with the vanished day Remembrance came
Vivid with dreams, and sweet with magic song,
Soft haunting echoes of a distant sea
As from another world. A belt of flame
Held the swift past, and made each moment long
With the tense horror of mortality.
That easy lordling of the Universe
Who plotted days that stain the path of time,
For him was happy memory a curse,
And Man a scapegoat for a royal crime. ”

“ Grass-nestled crocuses that scorn the wind
Speared upward proudly and besought mankind
To step with care. Near by, we searched a glade
Where violets brood in sweetness, half afraid{19}
To wake their petals. ”

“ And sprang, it seemed, from the wild interplay
Of flower-woven garb. Around his waist
Twined traveller’s-joy and honeysuckle, sweet
And freshly dewed, and on his lissom feet
Were pointed shoes of silver beech rush-laced.
The village gazed in silence, till a child
Began:—“Who are you, funny man?
Your face seems to be telling truth, your eyes
Are just the colour of blue butterflies,
O tell us who you are?” ”

“ Sea-campion globed, and clinging dew
In giant flower-bells.
“Bend down—an ebon beetle prowls,
And there a swinging bee
Drinks honey from the laden cowls
That clothe the foxglove tree.
And giant peacock butterflies
Light meadowsweet with sudden eyes,
And through the tangled grasses rise
Lucerne and timothy.”
Louder and louder grew the voice, until
A figure specked the heaven-touching hill,
And nearer, nearer, still ...
The villagers in mingled fear and awe
Stood round on tiptoe waiting. Soon they saw
A little sylvan man with beckoning eyes
And limbs of lithe expression. ”

“ And best is dumb applause. Behold, she moves:
No soft-winged owlets blink, no cricket sings,
Before she greets the murmuring world she loves.
Now twirling parachutes of sycamore
Hang waiting, and the rippled trout-rings die,
The murmur round a jasmine honey store
Is still—a linnet falters suddenly.
From out the reeds an awe-struck otter peers
As eerie quiet speeds from bush to bush:
High Summer stands on tip-toe as She nears
The woods, and magic numbs the missel-thrush:
Above still grasses prick the listening ears
Of rabbits, and a squirrel whispers “Hush!”{77}
REACTION ”

“ And heard a sudden murmur in the wind.
B. E. F., 1917.{41}
KEATS, BEFORE ACTION
A little moment more—O, let me hear
(The thunder rolls above, and star-shells fall)
Those melodies unheard re-echo clear
Before the shuddering moment closes all.
They come—they come—they answer to my call,
That Grecian throng of graven ecstasies,
Hyperion aglow in blazing skies,
And Cortez with the wonder in his eyes.
In battle-wreaths of smoke they rise, and fall
Beyond—beyond recall. ”

“ Peal after peal of splitting thunder rolls
(Still roar the howling guns, and star-shells rise)
We perish, drowned in anger-blasted holes,
Give ear, O Lord! Our very manhood cries,
Shell-fodder yea—but spare our human souls
From fury-shaken skies!
{23}
II
RESURRECTION
Five million men are dead. ”

“ But all is dim—The rolling wagon-stream
To Amiens between the aspen trees,
The stables, billets, men and horses, seem
Dead mummers of forgotten fantasies.
Only my dreams are still aglow, a throng
Of scenes that crowded through a waiting mind
A myriad scenes: For I have swept along
To foam ashriek with gulls, and rowed behind
Brown oarsmen swinging to an ocean song
Where stately galleons bowed before the wind.
{56}
“WE POETS OF THE PROUD OLD LINEAGE”
Apart we labour, and alone we climb
The barren heights ”

“ My thanks are due to the editors of the Nineteenth Century, Cornhill Magazine, Observer, New Statesman, and Westminster Gazette, for permission to reprint certain of these poems.{1}
I
THE DARDANELLES
{2}
{3}
FROM “W” BEACH
The Isle of Imbros, set in turquoise blue,
Lies to the westward; on the eastern side
The purple hills of Asia fade from view,
And rolling battleships at anchor ride.
White flocks of cloud float by, the sunset glows,
And dipping gulls fleck a slow-waking sea,
Where dim steel-shadowed forms with foaming bows
Wind up the Narrows towards Gallipoli. ”