How slow you move, old Time; Walk a bit faster! Old fool, I’m not your slave.... Beauty’s my master! You hold me for a space.... What are you, Time? A ghost, a thing of thought, An easy rhyme. Some day I shall again, For all your scheming, See Severn valley clouds Like banners streaming. And walk in Cranham lanes, By Maisemore go.... But, fool, decrepit Fool, You are SO SLOW!!!
The destined bullet wounded him, They brought him down to die, Far-off a bugle sounded him “Retreat,” Good-bye. Strange, that from ways so hated, And tyranny so hard Should come this strangely fated And farewell word. He thought, “Some Old Sweat might Have thrilled at heart to hear, Gone down into the night Too proud to fear! But I--the fool at arms, Musician, poet to boot, Who hail release; what charms In this salute?” He smiled--“The latest jest That time on me shall play.” And watched the dying west, Went out with the day.
If only this fear would leave me I could dream of Crickley Hill And a hundred thousand thoughts of home would visit my heart in sleep; But here the peace is shattered all day by the devil’s will, And the guns bark night-long to spoil the velvet silence deep. O who could think that once we drank in quiet inns and cool And saw brown oxen trooping the dry sands to slake Their thirst at the river flowing, or plunged in a silver pool To shake the sleepy drowse off before well awake? We are stale here, we are covered body and soul and mind With mire of the trenches, close clinging and foul. We have left our old inheritance, our Paradise behind, And clarity is lost to us and cleanness of soul. O blow here, you dusk-airs and breaths of half-light, And comfort despairs of your darlings that long Night and day for sound of your bells, or a sight Of your tree-bordered lanes, land of blossom and song. Autumn will be here soon, but the road of coloured leaves Is not for us, the up and down highway where go Earth’s pilgrims to wonder where Malvern upheaves That blue-emerald splendour under great clouds of snow. Some day we’ll fill in trenches, level the land and turn Once more joyful faces to the country where trees Bear thickly for good drink, where strong sunsets burn Huge bonfires of glory--O God, send us peace! Hard it is for men of moors or fens to endure Exile and hardship, or the Northland grey-drear; But we of the rich plain of sweet airs and pure, Oh! Death would take so much from us, how should we not fear?
I WATCHED the boys of England where they went Through mud and water to do appointed things. See one a stake, and one wire-netting brings, And one comes slowly under a burden bent Of ammunition. Though the strength be spent They “carry on” under the shadowing wings Of Death the ever-present. And hark, one sings Although no joy from the grey skies be lent. Are these the heroes--these? have kept from you The power of primal savagery so long? Shall break the devil’s legions? These they are Who do in silence what they might boast to do; In the height of battle tell the world in song How they do hate and fear the face of War.
Watching the dark my spirit rose in flood On that most dearest Prelude of my delight. The low-lying mist lifted its hood, The October stars showed nobly in clear night. When I return, and to real music-making, And play that Prelude, how will it happen then? Shall I feel as I felt, a sentry hardly waking, With a dull sense of No Man’s Land again?
“MAIL’S UP!” The vast of night is over, And love of friends fills all one’s mind. (His wife, his sister, or his lover.) Mail’s up, the vast of night is over, The grey-faced heaven joy does cover With love, and God once more seems kind. “Mail’s up!” the vast of night is over, And love of friends fills all one’s mind.
The “crumps” are falling twenty to the minute. We crouch, and wait the end of it--or us. Just behind the trench, before, and in it, The “crumps” are falling twenty to the minute; (O Framilode! O Maisemore’s laughing linnet!) Here comes a monster like a motor-bus. The “crumps” are falling twenty to the minute: We crouch and wait the end of it--or us.
I HAVE seen Death and the faces of men in fear Of Death, and shattered, terribly ruined flesh, Appalled; but through the horror, coloured and clear The love of my county, Gloster, rises afresh. And on the Day of Days, the Judgment Day, The Word of Doom awaiting breathless and still, I’ll marvel how sweet’s the air down Framilode way, And take my sentence on sheer-down Crickley Hill.
Ivor Gurney was an English poet and composer born in Gloucester in 1890. He studied at the Royal College of Music and served in the First World War, which influenced his writing. His poetry often draws on the landscapes of Gloucestershire and the trauma of the trenches, combining lyrical observation with a stark, fragmented voice. He also composed songs, setting poems by A.E. Housman and others to music. His collections include Severn and Somme and War's Embers. He spent the last years of his life in mental hospitals and died of tuberculosis in 1937. His work has been increasingly studied for its contribution to war poetry and its blending of music and verse.
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