On the idle hill of summer,
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.
Far and near and low and louder
On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder,
Soldiers marching, all to die.
East and west on fields forgotten
Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads and dead and rotten;
None that go return again.
Far the calling bugles hollo,
High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow:
Woman bore me, I will rise.
AE Houseman.
Photo by Alistair
8 comments:
This one is sad and kind of catchy. makes you want to recite it aloud.
Cheers,
Kat
Cheers Kat,
This one came to mind with some work I'm doing/planning on some Jacobite/Redcoat posts hopefully to come and also linked back to the sad story of The Black Watch of the previous post.
Cheers Kat,
This one came to mind with some work I'm doing/planning on some Jacobite/Redcoat posts hopefully to come and also linked back to the sad story of The Black Watch of the previous post.
Bit of a downer this week Alistair.
And he didn't even mention how they all laughed when McTavish tripped on the barbed wire and fell into the mud.
I left that one out deliberately. You know how I hate lifting the mood.
But McTavish did get a very nasty cut on his knee, so maybe I should put it back in.
I agree with Kat. Sad but has a very read-aloud-and-see-how-it-sounds vibe to it.
He sure knew how to put experiences in their place!
It made me run it through in my mind a few times when I read it first, That's a good thing in a poem.
Thanks ladies.
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