Those of you interested in military history probably recall that the Battle of Waterloo was fought on June 18, 1815 and that we recently marked its 197th anniversary. Bet that you didn't know that it is also an example of how history is often retold differently by different sources (and if you want proof of that go visit my friends at The Napoleon Series).
The English politician and poet Winthrop Mackworth Praed wrote this version of the Battle of Waterloo presumably after one or more visits to France in the decades immediately following the battle!
WATERLOO
Ay, here such valorous deeds were done
As ne’er were done before;
Ay, here the reddest wreath was won
That ever Gallia wore;
Since Ariosto’s wondrous Knight
Made all the Paynims dance,
There never dawned a day so bright
As Waterloo’s on France.
The trumpet poured its deafening sound,
Flags fluttered on the gale,
And cannons roared, and heads flew round
As fast as summer hail;
The sabres flashed their light of fear,
The steeds began to prance;
The English quaked from front to rear—
They never quake in France!
The cuirassiers rode in and out
As fierce as wolves and bears;
‘Twas grand to see them slash about
Among the English squares!
And then the Polish Lancer came
Careering with his lance;
No wonder Britain blushed for shame,
And ran away from France!
The Duke of York was killed that day;
The king was sadly scarred;
Lord Eldon, as he ran away,
Was taken by the Guard;
Poor Wellington with fifty Blues
Escaped by some strange chance;
Henceforth I think he’ll hardly choose
To show himself in France.
So Buonaparte pitched his tent
That night in Grosvenor Place,
And Ney rode straight to Parliament
And broke the Speaker’s mace;
“Vive l’Empereur” was said and sung
From Peebles to Penzance;
The Mayor and Alderman were hung’
Which made folk laugh in France.
They pulled the Tower of London down,
They burnt our wooden walls;
They brought the Pope himself to town,
And lodged him in St. Paul’s;
And Gog and Magog rubbed their eyes,
Awakening from a trance,
And grumbled out, in great surprise,
“Oh, mercy! we’re in France!”
They sent a Regent to our Isle,
The little King of Rome;
And squibs and crackers all the while
Blazed in the Place Vendome;
And ever since, in arts and power,
They’re making great advance;
They’ve had strong beer from that glad hour,
And sea-coal fires, in France.
My uncle, Captain Flanigan,
Who lost a leg in Spain,
Tells stories of a little man
Who died at St. Helene;
But bless my heart, they can’t be true;
I’m sure they’re all romance;
John Bull was beat at Waterloo!
They’ll swear to that in France.
Winthrop Mackworth Praed
(1802-1839)
Showing posts with label war poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war poetry. Show all posts
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Monday, November 10, 2008
A Sampling of Verse for Armistice Day
The Heroes
In that Valhalla where the heroes go
A careful sentinel paced to and fro
Before the gate, burnt black with battle smoke,
Whose echoes to the tread of armed men woke,
And up the fiery stairs whose steps are spears
Came the pale heroes of the bloodstained years.
There were lean Caesars from the glory fields
With heart that only to a sword-thrust yields;
And there were Generals decked in pride of rank,
Red scabbard swinging from the wary flank;
And slender youths, who were the sons of kings,
And barons with their sixteen quarterings.
And while the nobles went with haughty air
The courteous sentinel questioned: “Who goes there?”
And as each came, full lustily he cried
His string of titles, ere he passed inside…
And presently there was a little man,
A silent mover in the regal van.
His hand still grasped his rifle, and his eyes’
Seemed blinded with the light from Paradise…
His was a humble guise, a modest air—
The sentinel held him sharply: “Who goes there?”
There were no gauds tacked to that simple name,
But every naked blade leapt out like flame,
And every blue-blood warrior bowed his head—
“I am a Belgian,” this was all he said.
Men’s cheering echoed thro’ the battle ‘s Hell
“Pass in, mon brave,” said that wise sentinel.
M. Forrest
Brisbane, Queensland
At the Movies
They swing across the screen in brave array,
Long British columns grinding the dark grass.
Twelve months ago the marched into the gray
Of battle; yet again behold them pass!
One lifts his dusty cap; his hair is bright’
I meet his eyes, eager and young and gold.
The picture quivers into ghostly white;
Then I remember, and my heart grows cold!
Florence Ripley Mastin
(Teacher of English Literature, Brooklyn, New York)
The Connaught Rangers
I saw the Connaught Rangers when they were passing by.
On a spring day, a good day, with gold rifts in the sky.
Themselves were marching steadily along the Liffey quay.
An’ I see the young proud look of them as it was to-day!
The bright lads, the right lads, I have them in my mind,
With the green flags on their bayonets all fluttering in the wind!
A last look at old Ireland, a last good-bye maybe,
Then the gray sea, the wide sea, my grief upon the sea!
And when will they come home, says I, when will they see once more
The dear blue hills of Wicklow and Wexford’s dim gray shore?
The brave lads of Ireland, no better lads you’ll find,
With the green flags on their bayonets all fluttering in the wind!
Three years have passed since that spring day, sad years for them and me.
Green graves there are in Serbia and in Gallipoli.
And many who went by that day along the muddy street
Will never hear the roadway ring to their triumphant feet.
But when they march before Him, God’s welcome will be kind,
And the green flags on their bayonets will flutter in the wind.
Winifred M. Letts
(Winifred M. Letts served in 1915 as a V.A.D. nurse in Manchester Base Hospital, at Command Depot Camps at Manchester and Alnwick, and an Orthopedic Hospital in Blackrock, Dublin. The Connaught Rangers would be disbanded on July 31, 1922 in the wake of the regiment’s 1920 mutiny in India after news reached them of the brutal actions of Britain’s Special Auxiliaries – “the Black and Tans” - in Ireland.)
The Last Post
The bugler sent a call of high romance—
Lights out! Lights out!—to the deserted square:
On the thin brazen notes he threw a prayer.
God, if it’s this for me next time in France
Spare me the phantom bugle as I lie
Dead in the gas and smoke and roar of guns,
Dead in a row with the other shattered ones,
Lying so stiff and still under the sky—
Jolly young Fusiliers, too good to die.
The music ceased, and the red sunset flare
Was blood about his head as he stood there.
Robert Graves
(Captain, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, serving in France for 18 months including the battles of Loos and the Somme)
In that Valhalla where the heroes go
A careful sentinel paced to and fro
Before the gate, burnt black with battle smoke,
Whose echoes to the tread of armed men woke,
And up the fiery stairs whose steps are spears
Came the pale heroes of the bloodstained years.
There were lean Caesars from the glory fields
With heart that only to a sword-thrust yields;
And there were Generals decked in pride of rank,
Red scabbard swinging from the wary flank;
And slender youths, who were the sons of kings,
And barons with their sixteen quarterings.
And while the nobles went with haughty air
The courteous sentinel questioned: “Who goes there?”
And as each came, full lustily he cried
His string of titles, ere he passed inside…
And presently there was a little man,
A silent mover in the regal van.
His hand still grasped his rifle, and his eyes’
Seemed blinded with the light from Paradise…
His was a humble guise, a modest air—
The sentinel held him sharply: “Who goes there?”
There were no gauds tacked to that simple name,
But every naked blade leapt out like flame,
And every blue-blood warrior bowed his head—
“I am a Belgian,” this was all he said.
Men’s cheering echoed thro’ the battle ‘s Hell
“Pass in, mon brave,” said that wise sentinel.
M. Forrest
Brisbane, Queensland
At the Movies
They swing across the screen in brave array,
Long British columns grinding the dark grass.
Twelve months ago the marched into the gray
Of battle; yet again behold them pass!
One lifts his dusty cap; his hair is bright’
I meet his eyes, eager and young and gold.
The picture quivers into ghostly white;
Then I remember, and my heart grows cold!
Florence Ripley Mastin
(Teacher of English Literature, Brooklyn, New York)
The Connaught Rangers
I saw the Connaught Rangers when they were passing by.
On a spring day, a good day, with gold rifts in the sky.
Themselves were marching steadily along the Liffey quay.
An’ I see the young proud look of them as it was to-day!
The bright lads, the right lads, I have them in my mind,
With the green flags on their bayonets all fluttering in the wind!
A last look at old Ireland, a last good-bye maybe,
Then the gray sea, the wide sea, my grief upon the sea!
And when will they come home, says I, when will they see once more
The dear blue hills of Wicklow and Wexford’s dim gray shore?
The brave lads of Ireland, no better lads you’ll find,
With the green flags on their bayonets all fluttering in the wind!
Three years have passed since that spring day, sad years for them and me.
Green graves there are in Serbia and in Gallipoli.
And many who went by that day along the muddy street
Will never hear the roadway ring to their triumphant feet.
But when they march before Him, God’s welcome will be kind,
And the green flags on their bayonets will flutter in the wind.
Winifred M. Letts
(Winifred M. Letts served in 1915 as a V.A.D. nurse in Manchester Base Hospital, at Command Depot Camps at Manchester and Alnwick, and an Orthopedic Hospital in Blackrock, Dublin. The Connaught Rangers would be disbanded on July 31, 1922 in the wake of the regiment’s 1920 mutiny in India after news reached them of the brutal actions of Britain’s Special Auxiliaries – “the Black and Tans” - in Ireland.)
The Last Post
The bugler sent a call of high romance—
Lights out! Lights out!—to the deserted square:
On the thin brazen notes he threw a prayer.
God, if it’s this for me next time in France
Spare me the phantom bugle as I lie
Dead in the gas and smoke and roar of guns,
Dead in a row with the other shattered ones,
Lying so stiff and still under the sky—
Jolly young Fusiliers, too good to die.
The music ceased, and the red sunset flare
Was blood about his head as he stood there.
Robert Graves
(Captain, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, serving in France for 18 months including the battles of Loos and the Somme)
Thursday, November 8, 2007
"Lest We Forget - - "
Grass
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
Carl Sandburg (1918)
Private, 6th Infantry, Spanish-American War
Reveille
In the place to which I go,
Better men than I have died.
Freeman friend and conscript foe,
Face to face and side by side,
In the shallow grave abide.
Melinite that seared their brains,
Gas that slew them in a snare,
War’s inferno of strange pains,
What are these to them who share
That great boon of silence there?
When like blood the moon is red;
And a shadow hides the sun,
We shall awake, the so-long dead,
We shall know our quarrel done,--
Will God tell us who has won?
Ron Lewis Carton
Lieutenant, The Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry
CHAMPS D'HONNEUR
Soldiers never do die well;
Crosses mark the places--
Wooden crosses where they fell,
Stuck above their faces,
Soldiers pitch and cough and twitch--
All the world roars red and black;
Soldiers smother in a ditch,
Choking through the whole attack.
Ernest Hemingway, Paris, 1923
Ambulance Driver, Red Cross, World War I
Mesopotamia (1917)
They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave;
But the men who left them thriftly to die in their own dung,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave:
They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain
In sight of help denied from day to day:
But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,
Are they too strong and wise to put away?
Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide---
Never while the bars of sunset hold.
But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,
Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?
Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?
When the storm is ended shall we find
How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power
By the favour and contrivance of their kind?
Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,
Even while they make a show of fear,
Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends,
To confirm and re-establish each career?
Their lives cannot repay us—their death could not undo—
The shame that they have laid upon our race.
But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,
Shall we leave it unabated in its place?
Rudyard Kipling
Father of Lieutenant John Kipling, The Irish Guards,
lost at the Battle of Loos, 1915
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
Carl Sandburg (1918)
Private, 6th Infantry, Spanish-American War
Reveille
In the place to which I go,
Better men than I have died.
Freeman friend and conscript foe,
Face to face and side by side,
In the shallow grave abide.
Melinite that seared their brains,
Gas that slew them in a snare,
War’s inferno of strange pains,
What are these to them who share
That great boon of silence there?
When like blood the moon is red;
And a shadow hides the sun,
We shall awake, the so-long dead,
We shall know our quarrel done,--
Will God tell us who has won?
Ron Lewis Carton
Lieutenant, The Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry
CHAMPS D'HONNEUR
Soldiers never do die well;
Crosses mark the places--
Wooden crosses where they fell,
Stuck above their faces,
Soldiers pitch and cough and twitch--
All the world roars red and black;
Soldiers smother in a ditch,
Choking through the whole attack.
Ernest Hemingway, Paris, 1923
Ambulance Driver, Red Cross, World War I
Mesopotamia (1917)
They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave;
But the men who left them thriftly to die in their own dung,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave:
They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain
In sight of help denied from day to day:
But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,
Are they too strong and wise to put away?
Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide---
Never while the bars of sunset hold.
But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,
Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?
Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?
When the storm is ended shall we find
How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power
By the favour and contrivance of their kind?
Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,
Even while they make a show of fear,
Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends,
To confirm and re-establish each career?
Their lives cannot repay us—their death could not undo—
The shame that they have laid upon our race.
But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,
Shall we leave it unabated in its place?
Rudyard Kipling
Father of Lieutenant John Kipling, The Irish Guards,
lost at the Battle of Loos, 1915
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