Cheers & Tears

The first six months of World War II produced little poetry, but by last week Great Britain and her Dominions had begun to relieve the shortage. Available were several categories, beginning with mastiff-eyed Poet Laureate John Masefield's ode To the Australians Coming to Help Us:

Out of your young man's passion to be free

You left your lovely land to be our friends

Unto the death of Anzac, on the sea,

At Ypres, and on the chalk ridge of Pozieres,

Wherever death was grimmest you were there;

No battle in the world war anywhere

But you helped win or, failing, met your ends.

Again, you give your friendship: for the sake

Of fellow mortals wronged a world away,

You gladly lay down liberty and take

The Frontward road, wherever it may lead.

Advance, Australia; welcome and God speed.

That nation should help nation in her need

Is sunlight to us in this winter day.

More in the British give-'em-hell tradition is an airmen's song now being sung by Canadian fliers at the front. Written by Flying Officer William George Middlebro and Pilot Officer Harry Ashley, both of the 110th City of Toronto Squadron, its chorus goes:

Up boys, into the blue sky!

Up boys, that's where the foe fly!

Up boys, we've got a war to win:

We'll make history tremble

With our might and assemble

On the streets of Hitler's old Berlin!

We're the eyes of the forces:

Instrumental resources

Without us action can't begin.

And when we convince the Nazi

His government will collapse.

In every house there'll be a maiden waiting

We've got a lovely war to win.

England's first serious soldier-poet was discovered last week by Beverley Nichols in the person of a sergeant of the Royal Artillery, a onetime Etonian named A. H. V. Longman. But his Old Age, published in a regimental magazine, will hardly encourage anybody to enlist. Its theme is the disillusion and precocious soul-hardening of Europe's young men. The poem:

Once he was young and full of frolic ease.

Each beauty, flesh or grass, seemed sure to be

Starred symbols of eternal loveliness,

And every country sound and surge of wind

Stirred a small pebble in his stream of life.

Now lies his spirit barnacled, careened,

Unmoved as the slow swinging seasons pass

And pass again before unpassioned eyes.

Once soul and body he was part of them.

Now in a clarity of antique calm

He waits and watches, all the barriers down.

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