Rhyme and Reason | Featured Poems
Thank you for joining us for our production of Rhyme and Reason as part of Shoreham WordFest. Here you can find all of the fourteen poems featured as part of the show listed in order of appearance. Simply click on the poem title and enjoy!
On the Excellence of Burgundy Wine by Hilaire Belloc (as read by Hilaire Belloc)
1916 seen from 1921 by Edmund Blunden (as read by Edmund Blunden) [Extract]
To Joy by Edmund Blunden (as read by Edmund Blunden) [Extract]
Preparations For Victory by Edmund Blunden (as read by Edmund Blunden) [Extract]
The Thresher's Labour by Stephen Duck (as read by Mary Collier) [Extract]
The Woman's Labour by Mary Collier (as read by Mary Collier) [Extract]
Chance Memory by John Stanley Purvis (as read by Edmund Blunden)
To a Nightingale by Charlotte Smith (as read by Charlotte Smith)
To Night by Charlotte Smith (as read by Edmund Blunden)
The Survival by Edmund Blunden (as read by Hilaire Belloc) [Extract]
The South Country by Hilaire Belloc (as read by Hilaire Belloc)
Guest Poem by Miscellaneous (as read by Edmund Blunden)
Ha'nacker Mill by Hilaire Belloc (as read by Hilaire Belloc)
Report on Experience by Edmund Blunden (as read by Edmund Blunden)
On the Excellence of Burgundy Wine by Hilaire Belloc (as read by Hilaire Belloc)
My jolly fat host with your face all a-grin,
Come, open the door to us, let us come in.
A score of stout fellows who think it no sin
If they toast till they're hoarse, and drink till they spin,
Hoofed it amain
Rain or no rain,
To crack your old jokes, and your bottle to drain.
Such a warmth in the belly that nectar begets
As soon as his guts with its humour he wets,
The miser his gold, and the student his debts,
And the beggar his rags and his hunger forgets.
For there's never a wine
Like this tipple of thine
From the great hill of Nuits to the River of Rhine.
Outside you may hear the great gusts as they go
By Foy, by Duerne, and the hills of Lerraulx,
But the rain he may rain, and the wind he may blow,
If the Devil's above there's good liquor below.
So it abound,
Pass it around,
Burgundy's Burgundy all the year round.
1916 seen from 1921 by Edmund Blunden (as read by Edmund Blunden)
Tired with dull grief, grown old before my day,
I sit in solitude and only hear
Long silent laughters, murmurings of dismay,
The lost intensities of hope and fear;
In those old marshes yet the rifles lie,
On the thin breastwork flutter the grey rags,
The very books I read are there—and I
Dead as the men I loved, wait while life drags
Its wounded length from those sad streets of war
Into green places here, that were my own;
But now what once was mine is mine no more,
I seek such neighbours here and I find none.
With such strong gentleness and tireless will
Those ruined houses seared themselves in me,
Passionate I look for their dumb story still,
And the charred stub outspeaks the living tree.
I rise up at the singing of a bird
And scarcely knowing slink along the lane,
I dare not give a soul a look or word
Where all have homes and none’s at home in vain:
Deep red the rose burned in the grim redoubt,
The self-sown wheat around was like a flood,
In the hot path the lizard lolled time out,
The saints in broken shrines were bright as blood.
Sweet Mary’s shrine between the sycamores!
There we would go, my friend of friends and I,
And snatch long moments from the grudging wars,
Whose dark made light intense to see them by.
Shrewd bit the morning fog, the whining shots
Spun from the wrangling wire: then in warm swoon
The sun hushed all but the cool orchard plots,
We crept in the tall grass and slept till noon.
To Joy by Edmund Blunden (as read by Edmund Blunden)
Is not this enough for moan
To see this babe all motherless -
A babe beloved - thrust out alone
Upon death's wilderness?
Out tears fall, fall, fall - I would weep
My blood away to make her warm,
Who never went on earth one step,
Nor heard the breath of the storm.
How shall you go, my little child,
Alone on that most wintry wild?
Preparations For Victory by Edmund Blunden (as read by Edmund Blunden)
My soul, dread not the pestilence that hags
The valley; flinch not you, my body young.
At these great shouting smokes and snarling jags
Of fiery iron; as yet may not be flung
The dice that claims you. Manly move among
These ruins, and what you must do, do well;
Look, here are gardens, there mossed boughs are hung
With apples who bright cheeks none might excel,
And there's a house as yet unshattered by a shell.
"I'll do my best," the soul makes sad reply,
"And I will mark the yet unmurdered tree,
The tokens of dear homes that court the eye,
And yet I see them not as I would see.
Hovering between, a ghostly enemy.
Sickens the light, and poisoned, withered, wan,
The least defiled turns desperate to me."
The body, poor unpitied Caliban,
Parches and sweats and grunts to win the name of Man.
Days or eternities like swelling waves
Surge on, and still we drudge in this dark maze;
The bombs and coils and cans by strings of slaves
Are borne to serve the coming day of days;
Pale sleep in slimy cellars scarce allays
With its brief blank the burden. Look, we lose;
The sky is gone, the lightless, drenching haze
Of rainstorms chills the bone; earth, air are foes,
The black fiend leaps brick-red as life's last picture goes.
Chance Memory by John Stanley Purvis (as read by Edmund Blunden)
I can't forget the lane that goes from Steyning to the Ring
In summer time, and on the Downs how larks and linnets sing
High in the sun. The wind comes off the sea, and, oh, the air!
I never knew till now that life in old days was so fair,
But now I know it in this filthy rat-infested ditch,
When every shell must kill or spare, and God alone knows which,
And I am made a beast of prey, and this trench is my lair -
My God! I never knew till now that those days were so fair.
And we assault in half-an-hour, and - it's a silly thing,
I can't forget the lane that goes from Steyning to the Ring.
To a Nightingale by Charlotte Smith (as read by Charlotte Smith)
Poor melancholy bird, that all night long
Tell'st to the moon thy tale of tender woe;
From what sad cause can such sweet sorrow flow,
And whence this mournful melody of song?
Thy poet's musing fancy would translate
What mean the sounds that swell thy little breast,
When still at dewy eve thou leav'st thy nest,
Thus to the listening night to sing thy fate.
Pale Sorrow's victims wert thou once among,
Though now released in woodlands wild to rove;
Say, hast thou felt from friends some cruel wrong,
Or diedst thou – martyr of disastrous love?
Ah, songstress sad, that such my lot might be;
To sigh and sing at liberty, like thee!
To Night by Charlotte Smith (as read by Edmund Blunden)
I love thee, mournful, sober-suited Night!
When the faint moon, yet lingering in her wane,
And veil'd in clouds, with pale uncertain light
Hangs o'er the waters of the restless main.
In deep depression sunk, the enfeebled mind
Will to the deaf cold elements complain,
And tell the embosom'd grief, however vain,
To sullen surges and the viewless wind.
Though no repose on thy dark breast I find,
I still enjoy thee--cheerless as thou art;
For in thy quiet gloom the exhausted heart
Is calm, though wretched; hopeless, yet resigned.
While to the winds and waves its sorrows given,
May reach--though lost on earth--the ear of Heaven!
The Survival by Edmund Blunden (as read by Hilaire Belloc)
To-day’s house makes to-morrow’s road;
I knew these heaps of stone
When they were walls of grace and might,
The country’s honour, art’s delight
That over fountain’d silence show’d
Fame’s final bastion.
Inheritance has found fresh work,
Disunion union breeds;
Beauty the strong, its difference lost,
Has matter fit for flood and frost.
Here’s the true blood that will not shirk
Life’s new-commanding needs.
With curious costly zeal, O man,
Raise orrery and ode;
How shines your tower, the only one
Of that especial site and stone!
And even the dream’s confusion can
Sustain to-morrow’s road.
The South Country by Hilaire Belloc (as read by Hilaire Belloc)
When I am living in the Midlands
That are sodden and unkind,
I light my lamp in the evening:
My work is left behind;
And the great hills of the South Country
Come back into my mind.
The great hills of the South Country
They stand along the sea;
And it's there walking in the high woods
That I could wish to be,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Walking along with me.
The men that live in North England
I saw them for a day:
Their hearts are set upon the waste fells,
Their skies are fast and grey;
From their castle-walls a man may see
The mountains far away.
The men that live in West England
They see the Severn strong,
A-rolling on rough water brown
Light aspen leaves along.
They have the secret of the Rocks,
And the oldest kind of song.
But the men that live in the South Country
Are the kindest and most wise,
They get their laughter from the loud surf,
And the faith in their happy eyes
Comes surely from our Sister the Spring
When over the sea she flies;
The violets suddenly bloom at her feet,
She blesses us with surprise.
I never get between the pines
But I smell the Sussex air;
Nor I never come on a belt of sand
But my home is there.
And along the sky the line of the Downs
So noble and so bare.
A lost thing could I never find,
Nor a broken thing mend:
And I fear I shall be all alone
When I get towards the end.
Who will there be to comfort me
Or who will be my friend?
I will gather and carefully make my friends
Of the men of the Sussex Weald;
They watch the stars from silent folds,
They stiffly plough the field.
By them and the God of the South Country
My poor soul shall be healed.
If I ever become a rich man,
Or if ever I grow to be old,
I will build a house with deep thatch
To shelter me from the cold,
And there shall the Sussex songs be sung
And the story of Sussex told.
I will hold my house in the high wood
Within a walk of the sea,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and drink with me.
Ha'nacker Mill by Hilaire Belloc (as read by Hilaire Belloc)
Sally is gone that was so kindly,
Sally is gone from Ha'nacker Hill
And the Briar grows ever since then so blindly;
And ever since then the clapper is still…
And the sweeps have fallen from Ha'nacker Mill.
Ha'nacker Hill is in Desolation:
Ruin a-top and a field unploughed.
And Spirits that call on a fallen nation,
Spirits that loved her calling aloud,
Spirits abroad in a windy cloud.
Spirits that call and no one answers —
Ha'nacker's down and England's done.
Wind and Thistle for pipe and dancers,
And never a ploughman under the Sun:
Never a ploughman. Never a one.
Report on Experience by Edmund Blunden (as read by Edmund Blunden)
I have been young, and now am not too old;
And I have seen the righteous forsaken,
His health, his honour and his quality taken.
This is not what we were formerly told.
I have seen a green country, useful to the race,
Knocked silly with guns and mines, its villages vanished,
Even the last rat and the last kestrel banished -
God bless us all, this was peculiar grace.
I knew Seraphina; Nature gave her hue,
Glance, sympathy, note, like one from Eden.
I saw her smile warp, heard her lyric deaden;
She turned to harlotry; - this I took to be new.
Say what you will, our God sees how they run.
These disillusionments are His curious proving
That He loves humanity and will go on loving;
Over there are faith, life, virtue in the sun.