Gloucestershire Friends

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Fourth Impression

A Gloucestershire Lad at Home
and Abroad

Cloth 2s. net; paper 1s. 6d. net.

“The secret of Mr. Harvey’s power is that he says what other English lads in Flanders want to say and cannot.... This modest little volume has real charm, and not a little depth of thought and beauty. It contains far more real poetry than many a volume ten times its length.”—Bishop Frodsham in The Saturday Review.

“A poet of power and a subtle distinction.... This little collection of his poems, which has a Preface by his Commanding Officer, will give him a high place in the Sidneian company of soldier-poets.”—E. B. O. in The Morning Post.

London: Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd.

Gloucestershire Friends:
Poems from a German Prison Camp

by
F. W. Harvey
Author of
“A Gloucestershire Lad at Home and Abroad”

Introduction by the Right Rev. Bishop Frodsham
Canon Residentiary of Gloucester

London: Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd.
3 Adam Street, Adelphi, W.C.2. 1917

First published in 1917
All rights reserved

TO
THE BEST OF ALL
GLOUCESTERSHIRE FRIENDS
MY MOTHER

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

by Bishop Frodsham

“Good wine needs no bush.” Those who know and love “A Gloucestershire Lad” would resent any lengthy attempt to praise the quality of Lieutenant Harvey’s verses. Some of the poems from a German prison camp may reach a far higher standard of lyric excellence than any in the earlier volume. The two ballades on war and “The Bugler” grip one by the throat. But all the verses have a sweetness and beauty entirely their own.

The poems are all short—too short. Lieutenant Harvey sings like the wild birds of his own dear Gloucestershire because he cannot help doing so. He stops short—as they do—and like them begins again. What can we do but take what he gives us, wondering that he can write so well, mewed as he is in a cage—and such a cage! An agony of inarticulate longing shrills in a feathered cageling’s song: the man simply and unaffectedly lays bare his heart, his love, his faith, his hope, his sense of loneliness, of ineffectiveness, of baffled purposes and incompleted manhood.

Memory is at once the joy and torment of all who are forced to think. Memory tears the heart-strings of those who are in captivity. It makes some hopeless and weak, others bitter and savage, according to their natures. Beneath all the music of this man’s words there is an undertone of fierce anger that sweeps him away at times, but is this not characteristic of many other young Englishmen who laugh so well, and “woo bright danger for a thrilling kiss”? His memories sweep along the great gamut of his own tremendous experiences, and yet they never lose the melodies of home. Perhaps because of the objects of his heart’s desire he is so kindly withal, so modest, so humorous, and, to use his own words of another, “so worldly foolish, so divinely wise.” Herein is the fascination of these verses.

The manuscript was sent on by the prison authorities of Crefeld without any obliteration or excision. This must be counted unto them for literary righteousness. Yet it would be difficult to imagine what the most stony-hearted German censor could resent in any one of Lieutenant Harvey’s poems, unless it might be a deep love for England and an overwhelming desire to be with his love again.

Many unfortunates who have had dear ones imprisoned at Gütersloh, where most of these poems were written, and at other centres, are looking forward eagerly to the publication of this little book. If they expect to read descriptions of the life of the camp, or reflections upon the conduct of German gaolers, they will be disappointed. The circumstances of the case have made such revelations impossible. If they had been possible, it is still doubtful if they would have been made here. But it will be strange if such readers do not find better things than they expected. Transpose any other county of this land for Gloucestershire, or any other home for the tree-encircled house at Minsterworth, then they will learn what the best of England’s captive sons are thinking, and so take heart of grace from the true love-songs of a Gloucestershire soldier, written first and foremost for his mother.

GLOUCESTERSHIRE
FRIENDS

CLOUD MESSENGERS

You clouds that with the wind your warden

Flying toward the Channel go,

Or ever the frost your fruit shall harden

To hail and sleet and driving snow,

Go seek one sunny old sweet garden—

An English garden that I know.

Therein perchance my Mother, straying

Among her dahlias, shall see

Your rainy gems in sunlight swaying

On flower of gold and emerald tree.

Then in her heart feel suddenly

Old love and laughter, like sunshine playing

Through tears of memory.

LONELINESS

Oh where’s the use to write?

What can I tell you, dear?

Just that I want you so

Who are not near.

Just that I miss the lamp whose blessèd light

Was God’s own moon to shine upon my night,

And newly mourn each new day’s lost delight:

Just—oh, it will not ease my pain—

That I am lonely

Until I see you once again,

You—you only.

AUTUMN IN PRISON

Here where no tree changes,

Here in a prison of pine,

I think how Autumn ranges

The country that is mine.

There—rust upon the chill breeze—

The woodland leaf now whirls;

There sway the yellowing birches

Like dainty dancing girls.

Oh, how the leaves are dancing

With Death at Lassington!

And Death is now enhancing

Beauty I walked upon.

The roads with leaves are littered,

Yellow, brown, and red.

The homes where robins twittered

Lie ruin; but instead

Gaunt arms of stretching giants

Stand in the azure air,

Cutting the sky in pattern

So common, yet so fair.

The heart is kindled by it,

And lifted as with wine,

In Lassington and Highnam—

The woodlands that were mine.

WHAT WE THINK OF

Walking round our cages like the lions at the Zoo,

We think of things that we have done, and things we mean to do:

Of girls we left behind us, of letters that are due,

Of boating on the river beneath a sky of blue,

Of hills we climbed together—not always for the view.

Walking round our cages like the lions at the Zoo,

We see the phantom faces of you, and you, and you,

Faces of those we loved or loathed—oh every one we knew!

And deeds we wrought in carelessness for happiness or rue,

And dreams we broke in folly, and seek to build anew,—

Walking round our cages like the lions at the Zoo.

PRISONERS

Comrades of risk and rigour long ago

Who have done battle under honour’s name,

Hoped (living or shot down) some meed of fame,

And wooed bright Danger for a thrilling kiss,—

Laugh, oh laugh well, that we have come to this!

Laugh, oh laugh loud, all ye who long ago

Adventure found in gallant company!

Safe in Stagnation, laugh, laugh bitterly,

While on this filthiest backwater of Time’s flow

Drift we and rot, till something set us free!

Laugh like old men with senses atrophied,

Heeding no Present, to the Future dead,

Nodding quite foolish by the warm fireside

And seeing no flame, but only in the red

And flickering embers, pictures of the past:—

Life like a cinder fading black at last.

SONNET
(To One Killed in Action)

My undevout yet ardent sacrifice

Did God refuse, knowing how carelessly

And with what curious sensuality

The coloured flames did flicker and arise.

Half boy, half decadent, always my eyes

Sparkle to danger: Oh it was joy to me

To sit with Death gambling desperately

The borrowed Coin of Life. But you, more wise,

Went forth for nothing but to do God’s will:

Went gravely out—well knowing what you did

And hating it—with feet that did not falter

To place your gift upon the highest altar.

Therefore to you this last and finest thrill

Is given—even Death itself, to me forbid.

THE HATEFUL ROAD

Oh pleasant things there be

Without this prison yard:

Fields green, and many a tree

With shadow on the sward,

And drifting clouds that pass

Sailing above the grass.

All lovely things that be

Beyond this strong abode

Send comfort back to me;

Yea, everything I see

Except the hateful road;

The road that runs so free

With many a dip and rise,

That waves and beckons me

And mocks and calls at me

And will not let me be

Even when I close my eyes.

ENGLISH FLOWERS IN A FOREIGN GARDEN

Snapdragon, sunflower, sweet-pea,

Flowers which fill the heart of me

With so sweet and bitter fancy:

Glowing rose and pensive pansy,

You that pierce me with a blade

Beat from molten memory,

With what art, how tenderly,

You heal the wounds that you have made!

Thrushes, finches, birds that beat

Magical and thrilling sweet

Little far-off fairy gongs:

Blackbird with your mellow songs,

Valiant robin, thieving sparrows,

Though you wound me as with arrows,

Still with you among these flowers

Surely I find my sweetest hours.

THE BOND

Once, I remember, when we were at home

I had come into church, and waited late,

Ere lastly kneeling to communicate

Alone: and thinking that you would not come.

Then, with closed eyes (having received the Host)

I prayed for your dear self, and turned to rise;

When lo! beside me like a blessed ghost—

Nay, a grave sunbeam—you! Scarcely my eyes

Could credit it, so softly had you come

Beside me as I thought I walked alone.

Thus long ago; but now, when fate bereaves

Life of old joys, how often as I’m kneeling

To take the Blessed Sacrifice that weaves

Life’s tangled threads, so broken to man’s seeing,

Into one whole; I have the sudden feeling

That you are by, and look to see a face

Made in fair flesh beside me, and all my being

Thrills with the old sweet wonder and faint fear

As in that sabbath hour—how long ago!—

When you had crept so lightly to your place.

Then, then, I know

(My heart can always tell) that you are near.

TO YOU—UNSUNG
(Sonnet)

How should I sing you?—you who dwell unseen

Within the darkest chamber of my heart.

What picturesque and inward-turning art

Could shadow forth the image of my queen,

Sweet, world aloof, ineffably serene

Like holy dawn, yet so entirely part

Of what am I, as well a man might start

To paint his breathing, or his red blood’s sheen.

Nay, seek yourself, who are their truest breath,

In these my songs made for delight of men.

Oh, where they fail, ’tis I that am in blame,

But, where the words loom larger than my pen,

Be sure they ring glad echoes of your name,

And Love that triumphs over Life and Death.

A CHRISTMAS WISH

I cannot give you happiness:

For wishes long have ceased to bring

The Fortune which to page and king

They brought in those good centuries,

When with a quaint and starry wand

Witches turned poor men’s thoughts to gold

And Cinderella’s carriage rolled

Through moonlight into Fairyland.

I may but wish you happiness:

Not Pleasure’s dusty fruit to find,

But wines of Mirth and Friendship kind,

And Love, to make with you a home.

But may Our Lord whose Son has come

Now heed the wish and make it true,

Even as elves were wont to do

When wishing could bring happiness.

TO KATHLEEN, AT CHRISTMAS
(An Acrostic)

K ings of the East did bring their gold

A nd jewels unto the cattle fold.

T he angel’s song was heard by men

“H oly! holy! holy!” then.

L ittle and weak in the manger He lay

E ven as you in a cradle to-day;

E ven as you did the Christ-child rest

N estling warm in His mother’s breast.

Gütersloh,

December 1916.

CHRISTMAS IN PRISON

Outside, white snow

And freezing mire.

The heart of the house

Is a blazing fire!

Even so whatever hags do ride

His outward fortune, withinside

The heart of a man burns Christmastide!

TO THE OLD YEAR

Old year, farewell!

Much have you given which was ill to bear:

Much have taken which was dear, so dear:

Much have you spoken which was ill to hear;

Echoes of speech first uttered deep in hell.

Pass now like some grey harlot to the tomb!

Yet die in child-birth, and from out your womb

Leap the young year unsullied! He perchance

Shall bring to man his lost inheritance.

BALLADE
No. 1

Bodies of comrade soldiers gleaming white

Within the mill-pool where you float and dive

And lounge around part-clothed or naked quite;

Beautiful shining forms of men alive,

O living lutes stringed with the senses five

For Love’s sweet fingers; seeing Fate afar,

My very soul with Death for you must strive;

Because of you I loathe the name of War.

But O you piteous corpses yellow-black,

Rotting unburied in the sunbeam’s light,

With teeth laid bare by yellow lips curled back

Most hideously; whose tortured souls took flight

Leaving your limbs, all mangled by the fight,

In attitudes of horror fouler far

Than dreams which haunt a devil’s brain at night;

Because of you I loathe the name of War.

Mothers and maids who loved you, and the wives

Bereft of your sweet presences; yea, all

Who knew you beautiful; and those small lives

Made of that knowledge; O, and you who call

For life (but vainly now) from that dark hall

Where wait the Unborn, and the loves which are

In future generations to befall;

Because of you I loathe the name of War.

L’ENVOI

Prince Jesu, hanging stark upon a tree

Crucified as the malefactors are

That man and man henceforth should brothers be;

Because of you I loathe the name of War.

BALLADE
No. 2

You dawns, whose loveliness I have not missed,

Making so delicate background for the larches

Melting the hills to softest amethyst;

O beauty never absent from our marches;

Passion of heaven shot golden through the arches

Of woods, or filtered softly from a star,

Nature’s wild love that never cloys or parches;

Because of you I love the name of War.

I have seen dawn and sunset, night and morning,

I have tramped tired and dusty to a tune

Of singing voices tired as I, but scorning

To yield up gaiety to sweltering June.

O comrades marching under blazing noon

Who told me tales in taverns near and far,

And sang and slept with me beneath the moon;

Because of you I love the name of War.

But you most dear companions Life and Death,

Whose friendship I had never valued well

Until that Battle blew with fiery breath

Over the earth his message terrible;

Crying aloud the things Peace could not tell,

Calling up ancient custom to the bar

Of God, to plead its cause with Heaven and Hell ...

Because of you I love the name of War.

L’ENVOI

Prince Jesu, who did speak the amazing word

Loud, trumpet-clear, flame-flashing like a star

Which falls: “Not peace I bring you, but the sword!”

Because of you I love the name of War.