Book: Fairies and Fusiliers

• The Cool Web

  Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
  How hot the scent is of the summer rose,

  18 lines
• 1915

  I’ve watched the Seasons passing slow, so slow,
  In the fields between La Bassée and Bethune;

  15 lines
• I Wonder What It Feels Like To Be Drowned?

  Look at my knees, 
  That island rising from the steamy seas! 

  22 lines
• When I'm Killed

  When I’m killed, don’t think of me
  Buried there in Cambrin Wood,

  18 lines
• The Bough Of Nonsense

  Back from the Somme two Fusiliers 
      Limped painfully home; the elder said, 

  40 lines
• I'd Love To Be A Fairy's Child

  Children born of fairy stock
  Never need for shirt or frock,

  12 lines, 1 comment
• The Shivering Beggar

  NEAR Clapham village, where fields began,
  Saint Edward met a beggar man.

  44 lines, 2 comments
• A Pinch Of Salt

  When a dream is born in you
  With a sudden clamorous pain,

  19 lines
• Double Red Daisies

  Double red daisies, they’re my flowers,
  Which nobody else may grow.

  23 lines
• Cherry-Time

  Cherries of the night are riper
  Than the cherries pluckt at noon

  38 lines, 1 comment
• Letter To S.S. From Mametz Wood

  I never dreamed we’d meet that day 
  In our old haunts down Fricourt way, 

  91 lines
• Love And Black Magic

  To the woods, to the woods is the wizard gone;
  In his grotto the maiden sits alone. 

  34 lines
• To Robert Nichols

  (From Frise on the Somme in February, 1917, in answer to a letter saying: “I am just finishing my ‘Faun’s Holiday.’ I wish you were here

  27 lines
• Marigolds

  With a fork drive Nature out,
  She will ever yet return;

  23 lines, 1 comment
• Corporal Stare

  Back from the line one night in June,
  I gave a dinner at Bethune—

  32 lines, 1 comment
• Finland

  Feet and faces tingle
  In that frore land:

  12 lines
• Goliath And David

  If I am Jesse's son,'said he,
  Where must that tall Goliath be?'

  53 lines, 1 comment
• The Cottage

  Here in turn succeed and rule
  Carter, smith, and village fool,

  39 lines
• The Lady Visitor In The Pauper Ward

  Why do you break upon this old, cool peace, 
  This painted peace of ours, 

  7 lines
• The Cruel Moon

  The cruel Moon hangs out of reach
  Up above the shadowy beech.

  12 lines, 1 comment
• The Next War

  You young friskies who today
  Jump and fight in Father’s hay 

  43 lines
• Faun

  Here down this very way,
  Here only yesterday

  21 lines
• Strong Beer

  “What do you think
  The bravest drink

  42 lines
• Smoke-Rings

  BOY
  Most venerable and learned sir,

  23 lines
• Babylon

  The child alone a poet is:
  Spring and Fairyland are his.

  33 lines
• Free Verse

  I now delight
  In spite

  48 lines
• The Caterpillar

  Under this loop of honeysuckle,
  A creeping, coloured caterpillar,

  29 lines
• Sorley’s Weather

  When outside the icy rain
  Comes leaping helter-skelter,

  24 lines
• Dead Cow Farm

  An ancient saga tells us how
  In the beginning the First Cow

  12 lines
• The Poet In The Nursery

  The youngest poet down the shelves was fumbling 
    In a dim library, just behind the chair 

  33 lines
• Escape

  August 6, 1916.—Officer previously reported died of wounds, now reported wounded: Graves, Captain R., Royal Welch Fusiliers.)
  

  40 lines
• To An Ungentle Critic

  The great sun sinks behind the town 
  Through a red mist of Volnay wine…. 

  30 lines
• In The Wilderness

  Christ of His gentleness 
  Thirsting and hungering, 

  29 lines
• John Skelton

  What could be dafter
  Than John Skelton’s laughter?

  50 lines
• Jonah

  A purple whale
  Proudly sweeps his tail

  39 lines
• Careers

  Father is quite the greatest poet
      That ever lived anywhere.

  31 lines
• The Last Post

  The bugler sent a call of high romance— 
  “Lights out! Lights out!” to the deserted square. 

  8 lines
• A Child's Nightmare

  Through long nursery nights he stood
  By my bed unwearying,

  40 lines
• Mr. Philosopher

  Old Mr. Philosopher
  Comes for Ben and Claire,

  34 lines
• A Boy In Church

  “Gabble-gabble,… brethren,… gabble-gabble!” 
    My window frames forest and heather. 

  33 lines
• Not Dead

  Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain,
  I know that David’s with me here again.

  11 lines
• A Dead Boche

  To you who’d read my songs of War
  And only hear of blood and fame,

  13 lines, 1 comment
• The Spoilsport

  My familiar ghost again
  Comes to see what he can see,

  29 lines
• An Old Twenty-Third Man

  “Is that the Three-and-Twentieth, Strabo mine,
  Marching below, and we still gulping wine?”

  26 lines
• To Lucasta On Going To The War - For The Fourth Time

  It doesn’t matter what’s the cause, 
    What wrong they say we’re righting, 

  26 lines, 1 comment
• The Assault Heroic

  Down in the mud I lay,
  Tired out by my long day

  50 lines
• Two Fusiliers

  And have we done with War at last?
  Well, we’ve been lucky devils both,

  20 lines, 1 comment

• By me, right now

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