Wherefore Art Thou Romeo?
I see thee still in doublet wide,
And hose well kept, a world too slack,
So long and lean thou wert allied,
It struck me, with that curious back,
The Zoo giraffe. Thy brow was black,
Thy speech was awkward, action slow.
I whispered at thy first attack:
“And wherefore art thou Romeo?”
Thou wert then fifty and cross-eyed;
For acting never hadst the knack.
With stilted bow and Irving stride
Thou tookst the stage, and Jill and Jack
Both sniggered, when with damned clack
Thou talkedst of moons, and wrecked the show.
And here by Heaven, thou art back.
Oh, wherefore art thou Romeo?
This fellow was a lad of pride,
No prinked-out fool, with just a snack
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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The Unborn
I see grim War, a bestial thing,
with swinish tusks to tear;
Upon his back the vampires cling,
Thin vipers twine among his hair,
The tiger's greed is in his jowl,
His eye is red with bloody tears,
And every obscene beast and fowl
From out his leprous visage leers.
In glowing pride fell fiends arise,
And, trampled, God the Father lies.
Not God alone the Demon slays;
The hills that swell to Heaven drip
With ooze of murdered men; for days
The dead drift with the drifting ship,
And far as eye may see the plain
Is cumbered deep with slaughtered ones,
Contorted to the shape of pain,
Dissolving 'neath the callous suns,
And driven in his foetid breath
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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The Church Bells
The Viennese authorities have melted down
the great bell in St. Stephen's to supply metal
for guns or muntions. Every poor village
has made a similar gift.—Lokal Anzeiger.
The great bell booms across the town,
Reverberant and slow,
And drifting from their houses down
The calm-eyed people go.
Their feet fall on the portal stones
Their fathers' fathers trod;
And still the bell, with reverent tones,
From cottage nooks and purple thrones
Is calling souls to God.
The chapel bells with ardor spake
Above the poplars tall,
And perfumed Sabbath seemed to wake.
Responsive to their call
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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A Thermometrical Ballade
There’s a wind up that licks like a flame,
And the sun is a porthole of hell.
Now evanish prim notions of shame,
And the craving to look rather well –
In pyjamas you’re never a swell,
And you’ve chosen some roomily made.
Oh! for ices these pangs to dispel –
It’s one hundred and nine in the shade!
We have limped in from tennis. That game ! –
I’d as soon with the damned where they dwell
Stoke a furnace and bathe in the same!
There’s no drink human craving to quell,
Not thin chablis nor sweet muscatel.
Never more shall we see, I’m afraid,
The cool shallows, the pale asphodel.
It’s one hundred and nine in the shade.
You recline an invertebrate frame
In the moisture your atoms expel,
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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The One At Home
Don told me that he loved me dear
Where down the range Whioola pours;
And when I laughed and would not hear
He flung away to fight the wars.
He flung away—how should he know
My foolish heart was dancin' so?
How should he know that at his word
My soul was trillin' like a bird?
He went out in the cannon smoke.
He did not seek to ask me why.
Again each day my poor heart broke
To see the careless post go by.
I cared not for their Emperors—
For me there was this in the wars;
My brown boy in the shell-clouds dim,
And savage devils killin' him!
They told me on the field he fell,
And far they bore him from the fight,
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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Bullocky Bill
FROM a river siding, the railway town,
Or the dull new port there three days down,
Forward and back on the up-hill track,
With a creak of the jinker, a ringing crack,
Slow as a funeral, sure as steam,
Bullocky Bill and his old red team.
Ploughing around by the ti-tree scrub,
Four wheels down to the creeping hub,
Swaying they go, with their heads all low,
Bally, and Splodger, and Spot, and Jo.
Men in the ranges much esteem
Bullocky Bill and his old red team.
Worming about where the tall trees spring,
Surging ahead when the clay bogs cling;
A rattle of lash and of language rash
On the narrow edge of immortal smash.
He’d thread a bead or walk a beam,
Bullocky Bill with his old red team.
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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The Hapless Army
“A soldier braving disease and death on
the battlefield has a seven times better chance
of life than a new-born baby.”—Secretary of
War, U.S.A.
The Hapless Army from the dark
That lies beyond creation,
All blinded by the solar spark,
And leaderless in lands forlorn,
Come stumbling through the mists of morn;
And foes in close formation,
With taloned fingers dripping red,
Bestrew the sodden world with dead.
The Hapless Army bears no sword;
Fell destiny fulfilling,
It marches where the murder horde,
Amid the fair new urge of life,
With poison stream, and shot, and knife,
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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To The Men Of The Mines
WE SPECKED as boys o’er worked-out ground
By littered fiat and muddy stream,
We watched the whim horse trudging round,
And rode upon the circling beam,
Within the old uproarious mill
Fed mad, insatiable stamps,
Mined peaceful gorge and gusty hill
With pan, and pick, and gad, and drill,
And knew the stir of sudden camps.
By yellow dams in summer days
We puddled at the tom; for weeks
Went seeking up the tortuous ways
Of gullies deep and hidden creeks.
We worked the shallow leads in style,
And hunted fortune down the drives,
And missed her, mostly by a mile—
Once by a yard or so. The while
We lived untrammelled, easy lives.
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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Jam (A Hymn of Hate)
What is meant by active service
'Ere where sin is leakin' loose,
'N' the oldest 'and's as nervis
As a dog-bedevilled goose,
Has bin writ be every poet
What can rhyme it worth a dam,
But the 'orror as we know it
Is jist jam, jam, JAM!
Oh, the 'ymn of 'ate we owe it—
Stodgy, splodgy, seepy, soaky, sanguinary
jam!
There's the “fearful roar iv battle,”
What gets underneath yer 'at,
Mooin' like a million cattle
Each as big as Ararat;
There's the red field green 'n' slippy
(And I'm cleaner where I am),
But the thing that's got me nippy
It is jam, jam, JAM!
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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Breaking It Gently
ALL WAS UP with Richard Tanner—
‘Wait-a-Bit’ we called him. Dead?
Yes. The braceman dropped a spanner,
Landed Richard on the head;
Cracked his skull, sir, like a teacup,
Down the pump-shaft in the well.
Braceman hadn’t time to speak up,
Tanner never knew what fell.
Tell the widow? Who’d go through it?
No one on the shift would stir;
But Pat Ryan said he’d do it—
‘Nately break the news to her.’
Pat’s a splitter, and a kinder
Heart I never wish to know.
Stephens told him where to find her,
Begged him gently deal the blow.
In a very solemn manner
Ryan met the dead man’s wife—
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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