Bernard Gilbert

“ I am with poor against rich, labour against employer, women against men; I fight beside all strikers, mutineers, and rebels.
I welcome foes; I desire criticism.
I loathe prejudice, either social or national; I repudiate all claims.
I demand freedom of action and leisure for reflection.
Facing Death, I would say: 'I have tasted all, tried all, dared all, suffered all, and I repent nothing.'
[2] Song of Revolt
Crowns are ashake,
The princes and the Kings are bending low,
And, round the world,
Before the blast of Freedom, thrones are hurled:
The People are awake! ”

“ Thy years have passed away in that Great Search,
The quest that bruises hearts on hardest stone;
Seeking a refuge from dread loneliness,
Some haven where the soul is not bereaved;
Too often—my heart—hast thou been sorely bruised;
And now at last the truth confronts thy gaze,
Declared by flash against the pitiless night:
'The soul must die as it hath lived—alone.'
[34] Alone! The shuddering echo dies away;
No subterfuge, no shelter is there ever,
There is no anodyne for weary hearts;
For him who stands alone at this cross-road
The only hope is death. ”

“ Swift as a flash, hard as a stone,
Sharp as a flint, dry as a bone,
It pierces you without a sound,
The blast that comes from 'Deadman's Ground':
For when the wind is in the East
It's neither fit for man nor beast. ”

“ No more the waters roam the land,
But hid away on every hand
Are led in channels to the sea,
Instead of flowin' fancy free,
Instead of roarin' fierce an' wild
The same as when I wor a child,
They creep imprisoned an' defiled:
The waters roam no more.
[26] Oh Fools
Oh Fools! who plough, with hunger faint;
Who reap the harvest, lacking grain;
Oh Sheep! who offer no complaint;
Oh Worms! who dare not turn again.
The farmer leads the best of lives,
His food pours in: abundant feast;
Full fed upon your sweat he thrives ”

“ While stackyards clear, are ready for their turn,
And farmers smile across the level Hurn.
Oh! to be home, now that the winter's nigh,
And swifts by millions, flit about the sky,
When thatchers all get busy with their pegs,
And horses, out at grass, can stretch their legs;
When inns at night, are full of tired men,
Who've had a bumping harvest in the Fen ”

“ Of sweetest deepest draught the living bowl!
Although remorse should tear our hearts in twain,
The world, to part us, rageth now in vain
And life new-born through life doth bind us ever:
Strange incarnation! out of each made whole! ”

“ Safe-guarded dwellers in your sea-girt eyrie
How fares the fight?
Terror has crept beneath your ocean wall,
Horror is over-reaching, to appal;
Your sons are menaced by a furnace fiery:
What of the night?
A hundred years have passed at ease
Since last you fought on bended knees;
And joints, unused, grow stiff and old,
And hearts unroused are faint and cold;
Whilst they who own but wealth, their creed,
Stand helpless in the hour of need. ”

“ Who made you Lord and Master and placed us with the kine?
Who gave you leave to drink our sweat and mix our blood with wine?
[16]
To save the land for your children, who denied their country's wage,
Our sons have left their homes to fight, to guard your heritage;
When they return—Ah! woe to you before their righteous rage.
You held the land in sufferance to answer for your right,
To cherish those beneath you and lead them into fight ”

“ Old Dame Peach stuck like a leech to any good bargin what fell in her reach,
She never let slip what come in her grip: however they turned she was ready for each;
She'd strip herself bare or sell you her hair, or put up a price for her best china ware,
Her very own bed in which she was wed would be yours in a second, if only you dare;
Of childer she'd lots and would lend you their cots, and although you'd have backed her to lose in a race,
Yet at business she shone when the others wor done; and nobody ever could stand in her place. ”

“ The land is torn asunder,
The orchard trees are bare;
A muttering of thunder
Still shakes the heavy air.
Yet life goes on undaunted:
With aching hearts, and sore,
To raise our hearths and altars
We shall return once more. ”

“ He has interpreted their lives, their sorrows, their aspirations, with a surprising fidelity. Mr. Gilbert never loses his grip upon realities. One feels that he knows the men of whom he writes in their most intimate moods; knows, too, their defects, which he does not shrink from recording. There is little of the dreamy idealism of the South in the peasant people of Lincolnshire. The outwardly respectable chapel-goer who asks himself, in a moment of introspection ”

“ She bested the men what came out of the Fen, and the folk from the Wold they found theirsens sold,
While them from the Heath they was allers beneath; for however they tried they was out in the cold.
[40]
The top of the tree was our Mrs. P. at swapping a horse or a cargo of tea,
She'd purchase old wicks or a truckload of bricks or a house full of furniture, just for a spree,
Though she's mounted on high somewhere up in the sky, wherever she is there is business ahead,
But I wish she was back when we'd have a real crack on the friends that are gone and the days that are fled ”

“ Lincolnshire Lays; Farming Lays; Gone To the War; War Workers.
DRAMA: Eldorado; Their Father's Will; The Ruskington Poacher.
FICTION: What shall it Profit? Tattershall Castle; The Yellow Flag.
POLITICAL: Farmers and Tariff Reform: What Every Farmer Wants: The Farm Labourer's Fix.
MISCELLANEOUS: Living Lincoln; Fortunes for Farmers.
From The New Witness
Mr. Bernard Gilbert is one of the discoveries of the War. For years, it seems, he has been writing poetry, but it is only recently that an inapprehensive country has awakened to the fact. ”