Songs for a Little House

by Christopher Morley

THE WAR

IRONY

Anton Lang, the Christus of Oberammergau, has not been called upon to fight in the German army.

NEWS ITEM.

So War hath still some ruth? some sense of shame? The Crown of Thorns hath reverence even now? For when the summons to that village came, They spared the Christ of Oberammergau. Enlist the actors of that sacred mime— Paul, Peter, Pilate—Judas too, I trow; Spurn Christ of Galilee, but (O sublime!) Revere the Christ of Oberammergau.

TO A FRENCH BABY

Marcel Gaillard, Baby number 6 in Life's fund for
French war-orphans

What unsaid messages arise Behind your clear and wondering eyes, O grave and tiny citizen? And who, of wise and valiant men, Can answer those mute questionings? I think the captains and the kings Might well kneel in humility Before you on your mother's knee, As knelt, beside a stable door, Other great men, long before. In you, poor little lad, one sees All children and all mothers' knees: All voices inarticulate That cry against the hymns of hate; All homes, by Thames or Rhine or Seine, Where cradles will not rock again.

AFTER HEARING GERMAN MUSIC

What pang of beauty is in all these songs, Flooding the heart with painful bliss within— Was this the folk to which Von Kluck belongs, The land of poison gas and Zeppelin? Most gifted race the world has ever known, Now bleeding in the dust of rank despairs,— Was it for this men builded at Cologne, Kant wrote at midnight, Schumann dreamed his airs?

IN MEMORY OF THE AMERICAN AVIATORS KILLED IN FRANCE

Not at their own dear country's call, But answering another voice, They gave to Liberty their all, Nor faltered in the choice. Their young and ardent hearts were coined Into a golden seal for France; Above their graves two flags are joined; They lie beyond mischance. And we, remembering whence came Our Goddess where the sea-tide runs, Nobly acquit the noble claim France has upon our sons. Who dies for France, for us he dies, For all that gentle is and fair: God prosper, in those shell-torn skies, Our chivalry of air.

THE FLAGS ON FIFTH AVENUE

Above the stately roofs, wind-lifted, high, A lane of vivid colour in the sky, They ripple cleanly, seen of every eye. This is your flag: none other: yours alone: Yours then to honour: and where it is flown By your devotion let your heart be known. Feeble the man who dare not bow the knee Before some symbol greater far than he— This is no pomp and no idolatry. Emblem of youth, and hope, and strength held true By honour, and by wise forbearance, too— God bless the flags along the Avenue!

"THEY"

Whoso has gift of simple speech Of measured words and plain, To him be given it to teach The sadness of Lorraine. She asked but sun and rain to bless Her blue enfolding hills, And time, to heal the old distress Of dim-remembered ills. The fields, the vineyards and the lathe, The river, loved so well— O sunset pools and lads that bathe Along the green Moselle. One whispered word—curt, bitter, brief, Lives now in black Lorraine, One word that sums her whole of grief— Dead children, women slain. The curé's blood that stained the road, The village burned away, The needless horrors men abode Are all in one word—they.

BALLAD OF FRENCH RIVERS

Of streams that men take honour in The Frenchman looks to three, And each one has for origin The hills of Burgundy; And each has known the quivers Of blood and tears and pain— O gallant bleeding rivers, The Marne, the Meuse, the Aisne. Says Marne: "My poplar fringes Have felt the Prussian tread, The blood of brave men tinges My banks with lasting red; Let others ask due credit, But France has me to thank; Von Kluck himself has said it:— I turned the Boche's flank!" Says Meuse: "I claim no winning, No glory on the stage, Save that, in the beginning I strove to save Liége. Alas that Frankish rivers Should share such shame as mine— In spite of all endeavours I flow to join the Rhine!" Says Aisne: "My silver shallows Are salter than the sea, The woe of Rheims still hallows My endless tragedy. Of rivers rich in story That run through green Champagne, In agony and glory The chief am I, the Aisne!" Now there are greater waters That Frenchmen all hold dear— The Rhone, with many daughters, That runs so icy clear; There's Moselle, deep and winy, There's Loire, Garonne and Seine, But O the valiant tiny— The Marne, the Meuse, the Aisne!

PEASANT AND KING

What the Peasants of Europe Are Thinking

You who put faith in your banks and brigades, Drank and ate largely, slept easy at night, Hoarded your lyddite and polished the blades, Let down upon us this blistering blight— You who played grandly the easiest game, Now can you shoulder the weight of the same? Say, can you fight? Here is the tragedy: losing or winning Who profits a copper? Who garners the fruit? From bloodiest ending to futile beginning Ours is the blood, and the sorrow to boot. Muster your music, flutter your flags, Ours are the hunger, the wounds, and the rags. Say, can you shoot? Down in the muck and despair of the trenches Comes not the moment of bitterest need; Over the sweat and the groans and the stenches There is a joy in the valorous deed— But, lying wounded, what one forgets You and your ribbons and d——d epaulettes— Say, do you bleed? This is your game: it was none of our choosing— We are the pawns with whom you have played. Yours is the winning and ours is the losing, But, when the penalties have to be paid, We who are left, and our womenfolk, too, Rulers of Europe, will settle with you— You, and your trade. October, 1914.

TILL TWISTON WENT

Till Twiston went, the war still seemed A far-off thing: a nightmare dreamed, Some bruit or fable half-believed, Too hideous to be conceived. His letter came: the memories throng Of days that made the friendship strong— The oar he won, the ties he wore, His love of china, fairy lore, (And flappers); and his honest eyes; His stammer, his absurdities; His marmalade, his bitter beer, And all that made him quaint and dear. And though we muckle have to do Yet love must needs come breaking through, And now and then the office hum Dies like a mist, ... and there will come An Oxford breakfast scene: the quad All blue and grey outside—O God— And there sits Twiston at the feast Proclaiming he will be a priest! I see his eyes, his homely neb— Ring, telephones, and cut the web! And when it's over, will there be In his grey house above the Dee A mug to drain? Will we renew The dreams of all we hoped to do? Our Cotswold tramps? And will there still Be flappers in the surf at Rhyl? O how I counted on the hour When he would see the Woolworth Tower, And how we set our hearts upon The steep grey walls of Carcassonne!

TO RUDYARD KIPLING

For His Fiftieth Birthday
(December 30, 1915)

Lord of our noble English tongue, Who holdest seizin of our speech, Whose epic Mowgli first did reach The valves of all our hearts when young— Master of every grace and ire, Wide as the salt-winged fulmar gulls That circle England's battle hulls, Your songs have fanned the Imperial fire. By Oak and Ash and Thorns, by all Old memories of Sussex sod, To you we pile the altar clod And ask a new Recessional.

TO A U-BOAT

With Apologies to William Blake

Tiger, tiger of the seas, King of scarlet butcheries, What infernal hand and eye Planned your dread machinery? Men of Hamburg, Bremen, Kiel, Watch the gauge and turn the wheel, Proud, perhaps, to have defiled Oceans, to destroy a child. With your thunderbolt you strike Cargo, women, all alike— Stain with red God's clean green sea, Call it "naval victory." U-boat, U-boat, as you grope With your half-blind periscope, Lo, your hateful trail we mark, Send you to your kin, the shark!

KITCHENER

No man in England slept, the night he died: The harsh, stern spirit passed without a pang, And freed of mortal clogs his message rang. In every wakeful mind the challenge cried: Think not of me: one servant less or more Means nothing now: hold fast the greater thing— Strike hard, love truth, serve England and the King! Servant of England, soldier to the core, What does it matter where his body fall? What does it matter where they build the tomb? Five million men, from Calais to Khartoum, These are his wreath and his memorial.

MARCH 1915

Pussy willow, pussy willow Do you bloom in Belgium now? Tiny furry little catkins Where the Meuse runs green and clear, Do the children run to pick you In this springtime of the year? Do they stroke you and caress you Kiss the silky balls of fur, Take you to the priest to bless you And pretend to hear you purr? Do their small hot fingers wilt you? (Sweethearts, you remember how—) Pussy willow, pussy willow, Do you bloom in Belgium now?

DEAD SHIPS

We are not sudden haters; but by dint Of many horrors all our hearts are quick. We are not ready writers, with the trick Of rhyming just to see our words in print. Nor are we fast forgetters: there remain Bitter and shameful in our memory Old murders that made horrible the sea And tinged clean water with a red, red stain. Titanic: she went down for love of speed; The Eastland—curse her!—just for dirty greed; But there are ships whose names are yet more rank. The years have passed, but still our hearts are sick To think of the cool cruelty that sank The Lusitania and the Arabic.

ENGLAND, JULY 1913

To Rupert Brooke

O England, England ... that July How placidly the days went by! Two years ago (how long it seems) In that dear England of my dreams I loved and smoked and laughed amain And rode to Cambridge in the rain. A careless godlike life was there! To spin the roads with Shotover, To dream while punting on the Cam, To lie, and never give a damn For anything but comradeship And books to read and ale to sip, And shandygaff at every inn When The Gorilla rode to Lynn! O world of wheel and pipe and oar In those old days before the War. O poignant echoes of that time! I hear the Oxford towers chime, The throbbing of those mellow bells And all the sweet old English smells— The Deben water, quick with salt, The Woodbridge brew-house and the malt; The Suffolk villages, serene With lads at cricket on the green, And Wytham strawberries, so ripe, And Murray's Mixture in my pipe! In those dear days, in those dear days, All pleasant lay the country ways; The echoes of our stalwart mirth Went echoing wide around the earth And in an endless bliss of sun We lay and watched the river run. And you by Cam and I by Isis Were happy with our own devices. Ah, can we ever know again Such friends as were those chosen men, Such men to drink, to bike, to smoke with, To worship with, or lie and joke with? Never again, my lads, we'll see The life we led at twenty-three. Never again, perhaps, shall I Go flashing bravely down the High To see, in that transcendent hour, The sunset glow on Magdalen Tower. Dear Rupert Brooke, your words recall Those endless afternoons, and all Your Cambridge—which I loved as one Who was her grandson, not her son. O ripples where the river slacks In greening eddies round the "backs"; Where men have dreamed such gallant things Under the old stone bridge at King's, Or leaned to feed the silver swans By the tennis meads at John's. O Granta's water, cold and fresh, Kissing the warm and eager flesh Under the willow's breathing stir— The bathing pool at Grantchester.... What words can tell, what words can praise The burly savour of those days! Dear singing lad, those days are dead And gone for aye your golden head; And many other well-loved men Will never dine in Hall again. I too have lived remembered hours In Cambridge; heard the summer showers Make music on old Heffer's pane While I was reading Pepys or Taine. Through Trumpington and Grantchester I used to roll on Shotover; At Hauxton Bridge my lamp would light And sleep in Royston, for the night. Or to Five Miles from Anywhere I used to scull; and sit and swear While wasps attacked my bread and jam Those summer evenings on the Cam. (O crispy English cottage-loaves Baked in ovens, not in stoves! O white unsalted English butter O satisfaction none can utter!) ... To think that while those joys I knew In Cambridge, I did not know you. July 1915.

TO THE OXFORD MEN IN THE WAR

Often, on afternoons grey and sombre, When clouds lie low and dark with rain, A random bell strikes a chord familiar And I hear the Oxford chimes again. Never I see a swift stream running Cold and full from shore to shore, But I think of Isis, and remember The leaping boat and the throbbing oar. O my brothers, my more than brothers— Lost and gone are those days indeed: Where are the bells, the gowns, the voices, All that made us one blood and breed? Gone—and in many an unknown pitfall You have swinked, and died like men— And here I sit in a quiet chamber Writing on paper with a pen. O my brothers, my more than brothers— Big, intolerant, gallant boys! Going to war as into a boatrace, Full of laughter and fond of noise! I can imagine your smile: how eager, Nervous for the suspense to be done— And I remember the Iffley meadows, The crew alert for the starting gun. Old grey city, O dear grey city, How young we were, and how close to Truth! We envied no one, we hated no one, All was magical to our youth. Still, in the hall of the Triple Roses, The cannel casts its ruddy span, And still the garden gate discloses The message Manners Makyth Man. Then I recall that an Oxford college, Setting a stone for those who have died, Nobly remembered all her children— Even those on the German side. That was Oxford! and that was England! Fight your enemy, fight him square; But in justice, honour, and pity Even the enemy has his share. November 1916.

FOR THE PRESENT TIME

"If the trumpet speak with an uncertain sound, Who shall prepare himself for the battle?"

In all this time of agony How does this mighty nation drift: Our blood is red upon the sea, The foe is merciless and swift. We doubt, we sway, And day by day Our hearts are thicker with distrust.... We would, should, could, can, may—we must! So many divers voices call, And cloud our souls with dull dismay: O when shall cry, clear over all, The Voice that none can disobey? My country, speak! In no oblique Uncertain tone; be this our cry: If Honour is not ours, we die. My country, speak! They lie who say That we are soft with love of home; For still, in all the ancient way, Our ships shall kiss the perilled foam. Yea, slow to wrath, But lo, our path Leads straight at last, and blithe to tread: We shall live better, having bled. March 1917.

AMERICA, 1917

Dynamo of strength uncurbed, Boundless might, undisciplined; Energies still undisturbed, Power, unharnessed as the wind— Huge, inchoate commonweal, Lo, at last we catch the thrill: Now we found and forge the steel, Scoop a channel for the will. Here we stand; and destiny Now admits us no retreat: Hearts are braced from sea to sea, Hark! I hear the marching feet! Hills are moved; streams faster run; Plumper kernels fill the wheat, Now we dream and do as one.... Hark! I hear the marching feet! March 1917.

ON VIMY RIDGE

"The Stars and Stripes went into battle at Vimy Ridge on the bayonet of a young Texan, fighting with a Canadian regiment."—News item.

On Vimy Ridge the Flag renewed Her youth: the thunder of the guns Recalled the crimson plenitude Shed by her ancient sons. Once more her white and scarlet bands Were new-baptized with battle sweat: She felt the clutch of desperate hands, The push of bayonet. Across that bloody snarl of wire Her colors blossomed clean as flame: The Bride of Glory, in desire To meet her groom she came. The lightning in her folds she kept, The sky, the stars, the dew— Impassioned, in her youth she swept On Vimy, born anew!