First World War - The Troop Went Through by Edward Dyson

THE TROOP WENT THROUGH
I HEARD this day, as I may no more,
The world's heart throb at my workshop door.
The sun was keen, and the day was still;
The township drowsed in, a haze of heat.
A stir far off on the sleepy hill,
The measured beat of their buoyant feet,
And the lilt and thrum
Of a little drum,
The song they sang in a cadence low,
The piping note of a piccolo.

The township woke, and the doors flew wide;
The women trotted their boys beside.
Across the bridge on a single heel
The soldiers came in a golden glow,
With throb of song and the chink of steel,
The gallant crow of the piccolo.
Good and brown they were,
And their arms swung bare.
Their fine young faces revived in me
A boyhood's vision of chivalry.

The lean, hard regiment tramping down,
Bushies, miners and boys from town.
From 'mid the watchers the road along
One fell in line with the khaki men.
He took the stride, and he caught their song,
And Steve went then, and Meneer, and Ben,
Long Dave McCree,
And the Weavers three,
All whisked away by the "Come! Come! Come!"
The lusty surge of the vaunting drum.

I swore a prayer for each soldier lad.
He was the son that might have had;
The tall, bold boy who was never mine,
All brave with dust that the eyes laughed through,
His shoulders square, and his chin in line,
Was marching too with the gallant few.
Passed the muffled beat
Of their swanking feet,
The swell of drum, the exulting crow,
The wild-bird note of the piccolo.

They dipped away in the listless trees;
A mother wept on her beaded knees
For sons gone out to the long war's end;
But more than mother or man wept I
Who had no son in the world to send.
The hour lagged by, and drifting high
Came the fitful hum
Of the little drum,
And faint, but still with an ardent flow,
The pibroch, call of the piccolo.

Remembrance Week - Bullets by Edward Dyson

BULLETS

As bullets come to us they're thin,
They're angular, or smooth and fat,
Some spiral are, and gimlet in,
And some are sharp, and others flat.
The slim one pink you clean and neat,
The flat ones bat a solid blow
Much as a camel throws his feet,
And leave you beastly incomplete.
If lucky you don't know it through.

The flitting bullets flow and flock;
They twitter as they pass;
They're picking at the solid rock,
They're rooting in the grass.
A tiny ballet swiftly throws
Its gossamer of rust,
Brown fairies on their little toes
A-dancing in the dust.

You cower down when first they come
With snaky whispers at your ear;
And when like swarming bees they hum
You know the tinkling chill of fear.
A whining thing will pluck your heel,
A whirring insect sting your shin;
You shrink to half your size, and feel
The ripples o'er your body seal-
'Tis terror walking in your skin!

The bullets pelt like winter hail,
The whistle and they sigh,
They shrill like cordage in a gale,
Like mewing kittens cry;
They hiss and spit, they purring come;
Or, silent all a span,
They rap, as on a slackened drum,
The dab that kills a man.

Rage takes you next. All hot your face
The bitter void, and curses leap
From pincered teeth. The wide, still space
Whence all these leaden devil's sweep
Is Tophet. Fiends by day and night
Are groping for your heart to sate
In blood their diabolic spite.
You shoot in idiot delight,
Each winging slug a hymn of hate.

The futile bullets scratch and go,
They chortle and the coo.
I laugh my scorn, for now I know
The thing they cannot do.
They flit like midges in the sun,
But howso thick they be
What matter, since there is not one
That God has marked for me!

An Eastern old philosophy
Come home at length and passion stills-
The thing will be that is to be,
And all must come as Heaven wills.
Where in the swelter and the flame
The new, hot, shining bullets drip;
One in the many has an aim,
Inwove a visage and a name-
No man may give his fate the slip!

The bullets thrill along the breeze,
They drum upon the bags,
They tweak your ear, your hair they tease,
And peck your sleeve to rags.
Their voices may no more annoy-
I chortle at the call:
The bullet that is mine, my boy,
I shall not hear at all!

The war's a flutter very like
The tickets that we took from Tatt.
Quite possibly I'll make a strike;
The odds are all opposed to that.
Behind the dawn the Furies sway
The mighty globe from which to get
Those bullets which throughout the day
Will winners be to break or slay.
I have not struck a starter yet

The busy bullets rise and flock;
They whistle as they pass;
They're chipping at the solid rock,
They're skipping in the grass.
Out there the tiny dancers throw
Their sober skirts of rust,
Brown flitting figures tipping toe
Along the golden dust.

The Girl I Left Behind - Edward Dyson

THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME.

I said: "I leave my bit of land-
In khaki they've entwined me,
I go abroad to lend a hand."
Said she: "My love, I understand.
I will be true, and though we part
A thousand years you hold my heart"-
The girl I left behind me.

I went away to fight the Huns-
No coward thought could bind me,
I sizzled n the tropic suns,
I faced the bayonets and the guns.
And when in daring deeds I shone
One little woman spurred me on-
The girl I left behind me.

Out there, in grim Gallipoli.
Hard going they assigned me,
I pricked the Turk up from the sea;
I riddled him, he punctured me;
And, bleeding in my rags, I said:
"She'll meet me somewhere if I'm dead-
The girl I left behind me.

In France we broke the German's face-
They tried with gas to blind me.
In mud we bogged from front to base,
And dirt was ours, but not disgrace.
They carved me till I couldn't stand.
Said I "Now for the Lodden, and
The girl I left behind me.

I came ashore, and struck the track;
For dust you scarce could find me.
The dear girl gave no welcome back-
She'd changed her names and state, alack!
"You've been a time, I must say, Ned,
In finishing your old war." Said
The girl I left behind me.

I flung a song up to the skies.
For battles gods designed me.
I think of Fifi's laughing eyes,
And Nami, dusk, but sweet and wise,
And chortle in my heart to find
How very far I've left behind-
The girl I left behind me

---------------------------

On Thursday 25th April ANZAC Day was remembered. On 25th April 1915, the Australian and New Zealand forces entered the Great War in combat by landing at Gallipoli.

To remember this event I have posted the above poem by the exceptional Australian poet Edward Dyson, who saw action with the A.I.F.

Edward Dyson wrote in my opinion one of the greatest poems of the First World War “The Unredeemed.”

Remembrance Week - The Unredeemed by Edward Dyson

There are some poems that once read have a lasting effect on you.
This is one of those poems.
Edward Dyson was an Australian soldier who experienced the horror of the First World War,
He wrote some excellent verses and 'The Unredeemed' is probably his best.

It really is a hard, gritty work of art.

I saw the Christ down from His cross,

A tragic man lean-limbed and tall,

But weighed with suffering and loss

His back was to a broken wall,

And out upon the tameless world

Was fixed His gaze His piercing eye

Beheld the towns to ruin hurled,

And saw the storm of death pass by.

Two thousand years it was since first

He offered to the race of men

His sovran boon, As one accurst

They nailed Him to the jibbet then,

And while they mocked Him for their mirth

He smiled, and from the hill of pain

To all the hating tribes of earth

Held forth His wondrous gift again.

To-day the thorns were on His brow,

His grief was deeper than before.

From ravaged field and city now

Arose the screams and reek of war.

The black smoke parted. Through the rift

God's sun fell on the bloody lands.

Christ wept, for still His priceless gift

He held within His wounded hands.

Edward Dyson