THE POET LAUREATE AND HIS GERMAN FRIENDS.
"Prisoners to a foe inhuman, Oh, but our hearts rebel;
Defenceless victims ye are, in claws of spite a prey.
* * * * * * *
Nor trouble we just Heaven that quick revenge be done
On Satan's chamberlains highseated in Berlin;
Their reek floats round the world on all lands neath the sun:
Tho' in craven Germany was no man found, not one
With spirit enough to cry Shame!—Nay but on such sin
Follows Perdition eternal ... and it has begun."
The Poet Laureate, in "The Times," November 4th, 1918.
"The letter [of reconciliation from Oxford Professors, etc., 'to their fellows in Germany'] is written ... with the recognition that we have both of us been provoked to 'animosities' which we desire to put aside ... The commonest objection was that the action was 'premature'—my own feeling being that of shame for having vainly waited so long in deference to political complications, and that shame was intolerably increasing ... It is undiscerning not to see that at a critical moment of extreme tension they [the German Professors] allowed their passion to get the better of them."
The Poet Laureate, in "The Times," October 27th, 1920.
[The author of the following lines fears that he has failed to do full justice to the metrical purity of the Master's craftsmanship.]
Such people as lacked the leisure to peruse
My scripture, one-and-a-quarter columns long
In The Times, may like me, as having the gift of song,
To prosodise succinctly my private views.
Did I cry Shame! in November, 1918,
On those who never cried Shame! on the lords of hell?
Rather the shame is mine who delayed to clean
My soul of a wrong that grew intolerable.
What if our German colleagues, our brothers-in-lore,
Preached and approved for years the vilest of deeds?
Yet is there every excuse when the hot blood speeds;
We too were vexed and wanted our fellows' gore,
Saying rude things in a moment of extreme tension
Which in our calmer hours we should never mention.
Dons in their academic ignorance blind,
With passions like to our own as pea to pea,
Shall we await in them a change of mind?
Shall we require a repentant apology?
Or in a generous spasm anticipate
The regrets unspoken that, under the heavy stress
Of labour involved in planning new frightfulness,
They have been too busy, poor dears, to formulate?
Once I remarked that on German crimes would follow
"Perdition eternal"; Heaven would make this its care,
Nor need to be hustled, with plenty of time to spare.
Those words of mine I have a desire to swallow,
Finding, on further thought, which admits my offence,
That a few brief years of Coventry, of denied
Communion with Culture—used in the Oxford sense—
Are ample for getting our difference rectified.
What is a Laureate paid for, I ask The Times,
If not to recant in prose his patriot rhymes?
I stamp my foot on my wrath's last smouldering ember,
And for my motto I take "Lest we remember."
O. S.