John Whitworth: Two Poems

Far Away and Long Ago  

For old, unhappy, far off things

And battles long ago

—William Wordsworth, “The Solitary Reaper”

Stand upon the Saxon shore

And hearken to the dogs of war,

Hellish hounds that rend and slay

In France not forty miles away.

Stand and listen to the guns;

These are Ours, those are Huns,

Armies of a million men

Condemned to fight and fight again,

Through mud and blood they stumble on,

All faith, all hope, all honour gone,

Of wives and families bereft,

World without end. Till what is left?

Only the sundering, soughing sea,

A memory of a memory,

A tousled, tumbling hank of hair,

A perturbation of the air.

Only the shuttering shades that pass

Across the hissing, hungry grass,

A swallow dipping on the breeze,

And sorrow dropping from the trees.

John Whitworth

Elegies for Two English Poets

i

Let a brooding, black-sailed carvel

Bear the soul of Andrew Marvell,

In its last and sweetest slumber,

On the waters of the Humber,

Out upon the ocean breeze,

Out across the sundering seas,

To those Islands of Delight

Far beyond the encroaching Night,

Lands of Chocolate and Spice,

At the Gates of Paradise.

Andrew Marvell, Yorkshire’s son,

Wife and children had he none,

Friends and wine had he aplenty,

Darling of the cognoscenti.

Let this solemn passing bell

Ring his valedictory knell.

ii.

Let the waters of the Jordan

Wash the soul of Wystan Auden,

Wash it whiter than the snows are,

Though, like leaves in Vallombrosa,

Thick and fast his sins are strewn

Numberless beneath the moon,

Still the followers of his hearse

Honour Wystan and his verse.

Let there be, among the chosen,

Berlin boys in lederhosen,

Boys American and English,

Boys so kissable and tinglish,

Angels by the blushing binful,

Just to name them makes me sinful.

Shrive him, Lord. I know you must.

Sweeten Christian Wystan’s dust.

John Whitworth