The UK's Finest Actors Recite WWI Poetry

I remember trading emails with the late Christopher Hitchens about the War Poets on the occasion of Siegfried Sassoon's Military Cross being found in the poet's attic.

165 Years Ago Today, In Baltimore, Maryland...

...Edgar Allan Poe died.

They Also Serve Who Only Have a Club*

"101-year-old veteran pays visit to Museum of the Forgotten Warriors."

First, I didn't know that there was a Museum of the Forgotten Warriors, and the article doesn't do a very good job of explaining why they were forgotten. I had to go to the museum's website to discover that:

MISSION STATEMENT: The Museum of the Forgotten Warriors and Library Center is dedicated to all veterans. TO REMEMBER, RESPECT AND HONOR VETERANS.

Well, that is indeed a worthy mission.

I was tickled by this passage in the article:

As a doctor, he wasn't allowed to have a gun, so for training they issued him a club.

While on guard duty, he had to use the club instead of a gun and ask, "Who goes there?"


*I paraphrased this from a line from a famous poem. Points awarded for guessing the poem and poet.

I Got Dem Ol' WWI Shell-Shock Toejam Blues Again Mama!

European fungus picked up in WWI trenches by soldiers found its way to Scotland, where it still exists a century later.

The fungus was discovered on the grounds of Craiglockhart Military Hospital, where shell-shocked soldiers were sent for psychological treatment; among these were two of the war's greatest poets, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.

UK novelist Pat Barker wrote a fine novel about Craiglockhart, Owen and Sassoon, and a fine movie was made from the novel, which few people seem to have seen; here's the scene in which Owen and Sassoon first meet, both of them patients at the hospital, sent there for treatment of shell-shock, which today we know as PTSD:

Yer Poetic Satire of the Day

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a sequester.

Fun Poetry of the Day

A bit of Kipling:

As the Bell Clinks

As I left the Halls at Lumley, rose the vision of a comely
Maid last season worshipped dumbly, watched with fervor from afar;
And I wondered idly, blindly, if the maid would greet me kindly.
That was all -- the rest was settled by the clinking tonga-bar.
Yea, my life and hers were coupled by the tonga coupling-bar.

For my misty meditation, at the second changing-station,
Suffered sudden dislocation, fled before the tuneless jar
Of a Wagner obbligato, scherzo, doublehand staccato,
Played on either pony's saddle by the clacking tonga-bar --
Played with human speech, I fancied, by the jigging, jolting bar.

"She was sweet," thought I, "last season, but 'twere surely wild unreason
Such tiny hope to freeze on as was offered by my Star,
When she whispered, something sadly: 'I -- we feel your going badly!'"
"And you let the chance escape you?" rapped the rattling tonga-bar.
"What a chance and what an idiot!" clicked the vicious tonga-bar.

Heart of man -- O heart of putty! Had I gone by Kakahutti,
On the old Hill-road and rutty, I had 'scaped that fatal car.
But his fortune each must bide by, so I watched the milestones slide by,
To "You call on Her to-morrow!" -- no fugue with cymbals by the bar --
You must call on Her to-morrow!" -- post-horn gallop by the bar.

Yet a further stage my goal on -- we were whirling down to Solon,
With a double lurch and roll on, best foot foremost, ganz und gar --
"She was very sweet," I hinted. "If a kiss had been imprinted?" --
"'Would ha' saved a world of trouble!" clashed the busy tonga-bar.
"'Been accepted or rejected!" banged and clanged the tonga-bar.

Then a notion wild and daring, 'spite the income tax's paring,
And a hasty thought of sharing -- less than many incomes are,
Made me put a question private, you can guess what I would drive at.
"You must work the sum to prove it," clanked the careless tonga-bar.
"Simple Rule of Two will prove it," lilted back the tonga-bar.

It was under Khyraghaut I mused. "Suppose the maid be haughty --
There are lovers rich -- and forty -- wait some wealthy Avatar?
Answer, monitor untiring, 'twixt the ponies twain perspiring!"
"Faint heart never won fair lady," creaked the straining tonga-bar.
"Can I tell you ere you ask Her?" pounded slow the tonga-bar.

Last, the Tara Devi turning showed the lights of Simla burning,
Lit my little lazy yearning to a fiercer flame by far.
As below the Mall we jingled, through my very heart it tingled --
Did the iterated order of the threshing tonga-bar --
Try your luck -- you can't do better!" twanged the loosened tongar-bar.


Do you recognize that rhyme pattern and meter? It's very famous:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'


Yes, Kipling wrote As the Bell Clinks as a pastiche of Poe's The Raven. It is an early work, when he was learning his craft. More information on the poem here.

Poem of the Day

I'll credit a YouTube clip for turning me on to this one. Here's David O'Hara (Braveheart's Stephen of Ireland) as the Earl of Surrey from The Tudors:



And here is the poem in full:

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. 1516–47

41. The Means to attain Happy Life

MARTIAL, the things that do attain
The happy life be these, I find:—
The richesse left, not got with pain;
The fruitful ground, the quiet mind;

The equal friend; no grudge, no strife;
No charge of rule, nor governance;
Without disease, the healthful life;
The household of continuance;

The mean diet, no delicate fare;
True wisdom join'd with simpleness;
The night dischargèd of all care,
Where wine the wit may not oppress.

The faithful wife, without debate;
Such sleeps as may beguile the night:
Contented with thine own estate
Ne wish for death, ne fear his might.

Treasure Blog: Postcards From WWI War Poet Siegfried Sassoon

Found inside a book in a charity shop.



Never read Sassoon? Here's a sample:

The Redeemer

Darkness: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep;
It was past twelve on a mid-winter night,
When peaceful folk in beds lay snug asleep;
There, with much work to do before the light,
We lugged our clay-sucked boots as best we might
Along the trench; sometimes a bullet sang,
And droning shells burst with a hollow bang;
We were soaked, chilled and wretched, every one;
Darkness; the distant wink of a huge gun.

I turned in the black ditch, loathing the storm;
A rocket fizzed and burned with blanching flare,
And lit the face of what had been a form
Floundering in mirk. He stood before me there;
I say that He was Christ; stiff in the glare,
And leaning forward from His burdening task,
Both arms supporting it; His eyes on mine
Stared from the woeful head that seemed a mask
Of mortal pain in Hell's unholy shine.

No thorny crown, only a woollen cap
He wore--an English soldier, white and strong,
Who loved his time like any simple chap,
Good days of work and sport and homely song;
Now he has learned that nights are very long,
And dawn a watching of the windowed sky.
But to the end, unjudging, he'll endure
Horror and pain, not uncontent to die

That Lancaster on Lune may stand secure.
He faced me, reeling in his weariness,
Shouldering his load of planks, so hard to bear.
I say that He was Christ, who wrought to bless
All groping things with freedom bright as air,
And with His mercy washed and made them fair.
Then the flame sank, and all grew black as pitch,
While we began to struggle along the ditch;
And someone flung his burden in the muck,
Mumbling: 'O Christ Almighty, now I'm stuck!'

Great Limerick I Hadn't Heard Before

And it goes:

“There was an old bastard named Lenin

Who did two or three million men in

That’s a lot to have done in

But where he did one in

That old bastard Stalin did ten in.”


found here.

Beware The Jabberwock, My Son!

Especially so when it is read by horror legend Sir Christopher Lee.

Poem For The Day

Sir Walter Raleigh:

The Pilgrimage

Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope's true gage;
And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.
Blood must be my body's balmer;
No other balm will there be given:
Whilst my soul, like quiet palmer,
Travelleth towards the land of heaven;
Over the silver mountains,
Where spring the nectar fountains;
There will I kiss
The bowl of bliss;
And drink mine everlasting fill
Upon every milken hill.
My soul will be a-dry before;
But, after, it will thirst no more.