O Do Not Love Too Long W. B. Yeats (Irish 1865-1939)
Sweetheart, do not love too long:I loved long and long,And grew to be out of fashionLike an old song.
All through the years of our youthNeither could have knownTheir own thought from the other’s,We were so much at one.
But O, in a minute she changed–O do not love too long,Or you will grow out of fashionLike an old song.
Inexpensive Progressby John Betjeman
Encase your legs in nylons,Bestride your hills with pylonsO age without a soul;Away with gentle willowsAnd all the elmy billowsThat through your valleys roll.
Let's say goodbye to hedgesAnd roads with grassy edgesAnd winding country lanes;Let all things travel fasterWhere motor car is masterTill only Speed remains.
Destroy the ancient inn-signsBut strew the roads with tin signs'Keep Left,' 'M4,' 'Keep Out!'Command, instruction, warning,Repetitive adorningThe rockeried roundabout;
For every raw obscenityMust have its small 'amenity,'Its patch of shaven green,And hoardings look a wonderIn banks of floribundaWith floodlights in between.
Leave no old village standingWhich could provide a landingFor aeroplanes to roar,But spare such cheap defacementsAs huts with shattered casementsUnlived-in since the war.
Let no provincial High StreetWhich might be your or my streetLook as it used to do,But let the chain stores place hereTheir miles of black glass faciaAnd traffic thunder through.
And if there is some scenery,
Some unpretentious greenery,Surviving anywhere,It does not need protectingFor soon we'll be erectingA Power Station there.
When all our roads are lightedBy concrete monsters sitedLike gallows overhead,Bathed in the yellow vomitEach monster belches from it,We'll know that we are dead.
The Mask W. B. Yeats (Irish 1865-1939)
‘Put off that mask of burning goldWith emerald eyes.’‘O no, my dear, you make so boldTo find if hearts be wild and wise,And yet not cold.’
‘I would but find what’s there to find,Love or deceit.’‘It was the mask engaged your mind,And after set your heart to beat,Not what’s behind.’
‘But lest you are my enemy,I must enquire.’‘O no, my dear, let all that be;What matter, so there is but fireIn you, in me?’
The Oxen by Thomas Hardy
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
TWO SONGS FOR HEDLI ANDERSONby W. H. Auden
IStop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,Silence the pianos and with muffled drumBring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overheadScribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,My working week and my Sunday rest,My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Christmasby John Betjeman
The bells of waiting Advent ring,The Tortoise stove is lit againAnd lamp-oil light across the nightHas caught the streaks of winter rain.In many a stained-glass window sheenFrom Crimson Lake to Hooker’s Green. The holly in the windy hedgeAnd round the Manor House the yewWill soon be stripped to deck the ledge,The altar, font and arch and pew,So that villagers can say“The Church looks nice” on Christmas Day. Provincial public houses blazeAnd Corporation tramcars clang,On lighted tenements I gaze
Where paper decorations hang,And bunting in the red Town HallSays “Merry Christmas to you all” And London shops on Christmas EveAre strung with silver bells and flowersAs hurrying clerks the City leaveTo pigeon-haunted classic towers,And marbled clouds go scudding byThe many-steepled London sky. And girls in slacks remember Dad,And oafish louts remember Mum,And sleepless children’s hearts are glad,And Christmas morning bells say ‘Come!’Even to shining ones who dwellSafe in the Dorchester Hotel. And is it true? and is it true?The most tremendous tale of all,Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,A Baby in an ox’s stall?The Maker of the stars and seaBecome a Child on earth for me? And is it true? For if it is,No loving fingers tying stringsAround those tissued fripperies,The sweet and silly Christmas things,Bath salts and inexpensive scentAnd hideous tie so kindly meant. No love that in a family dwells,No carolling in frosty air,Nor all the steeple-shaking bellsCan with this single Truth compare -That God was Man in PalestineAnd lives to-day in Bread and Wine.
Christmas Eve 1914By Mike Harding
Christmas Eve in 1914Stars were burning, burning brightAnd all along the Western FrontGuns were lying still and quiet.Men lay dozing in the trenches,In the cold and in the dark,And far away behind the linesA village dog began to bark.
Some lay thinking of their families,Some sang songs while others were quietRolling fags and playing bragTo while away that Christmas night.But as they watched the German trenchesSomething moved in No Man’s LandAnd through the dark came a soldierCarrying a white flag in his hand.
Then from both sides men came running,Crossing into No Man’s Land,Through the barbed-wire, mud and shell holes,Shyly stood there shaking hands.Fritz brought out cigars and brandy,Tommy brought corned beef and fags,Stood there talking, singing, laughing,As the moon shone on No Man’s Land.
Christmas Day we all played footballIn the mud of No Man’s Land;Tommy brought some Christmas pudding,Fritz brought out a German band.When they beat us at footballWe shared out all the grub and drinkAnd Fritz showed me a faded photoOf a dark-haired girl back in Berlin.
For four days after no one fired,Not one shot disturbed the night,For old Fritz and Tommy AtkinsBoth had lost the will to fight.So they withdrew us from the trenches,Sent us far behind the lines,Sent fresh troops to take our places
And told the guns “Prepare to fire”.
And next night in 1914Flares were burning, burning bright;The message came along the trenchesOver the top we’re going tonight.And the men stood waiting in the trenches,Looking out across our football park,And all along the Western FrontThe Christian guns began to bark.
From the author: The story of the first Christmas of 1914 that inspired me to write the song was one I found in Frank Richards’s book. The generals denied that it ever happened, fearful that the desire for peace might spread like an epidemic along the trenches, but the di-aries and journals of the men who were there and the photographs that were taken on that historic occasion when men said ‘no’ to war and embraced their enemy prove beyond doubt that it did indeed hap-pen.
Flammondeby E.A. Robinson
The man Flammonde, from God knows where,With firm address and foreign airWith news of nations in his talkAnd something royal in his walk,With glint of iron in his eyes,But never doubt, nor yet surprise,Appeared, and stayed, and held his headAs one by kings accredited.
Erect, with his alert reposeAbout him, and about his clothes,He pictured all tradition hearsOf what we owe to fifty years.His cleansing heritage of tasteParaded neither want nor waste;And what he needed for his feeTo live, he borrowed graciously.
He never told us what he was,Or what mischance, or other cause,Had banished him from better daysTo play the Prince of Castaways.Meanwhile he played surpassing wellA part, for most, unplayable;In fine, one pauses, half afraidTo say for certain that he played.
For that, one may as well forgoConviction as to yes or no;Nor can I say just how intenseWould then have been the differenceTo several, who, having strivenIn vain to get what he was given,Would see the stranger taken onBy friends not easy to be won.
Moreover many a malcontentHe soothed, and found munificent;His courtesy beguiled and foiledSuspicion that his years were soiled;His mien distinguished any crowd,His credit strengthened when he bowed;And women, young and old, were fond
Of looking at the man Flammonde.
There was a woman in our townOn whom the fashion was to frown;But while our talk renewed the tingeOf a long-faded scarlet fringe,The man Flammonde saw none of that,And what he saw we wondered at--That none of us, in her distress,Could hide or find our littleness.
There was a boy that all agreedHad shut within him the rare seedOf learning. We could understand,But none of us could lift a hand.The man Flammonde appraised the youth,And told a few of us the truth;And thereby, for a little gold,A flowered future was unrolled.
There were two citizens who foughtFor years and years, and over nought;They made life awkward for their friends,And shortened their own dividends.The man Flammonde said what was wrongShould be made right; nor was it longBefore they were again in lineAnd had each other in to dine.
And these I mention are but fourOf many out of many more.So much for them. But what of him--So firm in every look and limb?What small satanic sort of kinkWas in his brain? What broken linkWithheld him from the destiniesThat came so near to being his?
What was he, when we came to siftHis meaning, and to note the driftOf incommunicable waysThat make us ponder while we praise?Why was it that his charm revealedSomehow the surface of a shield?What was it that we never caught?What was he, and what was he not?
How much it was of him we metWe cannot ever know; nor yetShall all he gave us quite atoneFor what was his, and his alone;Nor need we now, since he knew best,Nourish an ethical unrest:Rarely at once will nature giveThe power to be Flammonde and live.
We cannot know how much we learnFrom those who never will return,Until a flash of unforseenRemembrance falls on what has been.We’ve each a darkening hill to climb;And this is why, from time to timeIn Tilbury Town, we look beyondHorizons for the man Flammonde.
Eros TurannosBy E.A. Robinson
She fears him, and will always askWhat fated her to choose him;She meets in his engaging maskAll reason to refuse him.But what she meets and what she fearsAre less than are the downward years,Drawn slowly to the foamless weirsOf age, were she to lose him.
Between a blurred sagacityThat once had power to sound him,And Love, that will not let him beThe Judas that she found him,Her pride assuages her almostAs if it were alone the cost—He sees that he will not be lost,And waits, and looks around him.
A sense of ocean and old treesEnvelops and allures him;Tradition, touching all he sees,Beguiles and reassures him.And all her doubts of what he saysAre dimmed by what she knows of days,Till even Prejudice delaysAnd fades, and she secures him.
The falling leaf inauguratesThe reign of her confusion;The pounding wave reverberatesThe dirge of her illusion.And Home, where passion lived and died,Becomes a place where she can hide,While all the town and harbor sideVibrate with her seclusion.
We tell you, tapping on our brows,The story as it should be,As if the story of a houseWere told, or ever could be.We’ll have no kindly veil betweenHer visions and those we have seen--As if we guessed what hers have been,
Or what they are or would be.
Meanwhile we do no harm, for theyThat with a god have striven,Not hearing much of what we say,Take what the god has given.Though like waves breaking it may be,Or like a changed familiar tree,Or like a stairway to the sea,Where down the blind are driven.
