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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
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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
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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. |