Sunt Lacrimae Rerum

 What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

"If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.  There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven."

I have in my possession a copy of Brooke's 1914 and other Poems, printed in November 1915 (the tenth impression) with the following two inscriptions on the flyleaf:

In the centre of the page: "Sgt. E.G. Evans/NoT Canadian General Hospital/April 1917. France".

At the top left corner of the page, in a different hand: "From dear old Sgt. McGregor, who died in Not. C.G. H. Dec 19th 1917".

For all of his eclipse these days by Owen, Sassoon, et al., Brooke was wildly popular, and not only on the home front. On this 100th anniversary of the armistice, it might be worthwhile to remember the ideals for which "those who died as cattle" did die: naive as they may have been, they thought they were fighting to secure a better world.

Have we come anywhere near to realizing that aspiration?

Retrospective, and, I fear, prospective:

But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.

It's difficult with the weight of the rifle.
Leave it--under the oak.
Leave it for a salvage-bloke
let it lie bruised for a monument
dispense the authenticated fragments to the faithful.
It's the thunder-besom for us
it's the bright bough borne
it's the tensioned yew for a Genoese jammed arbalest and a scarlet square for a mounted mareschal, it's that county-mob back to back. Majuba mountain and Mons Cherubim and spreaded mats for Sydney Street East, and come to Bisley for a Silver Dish. It's R.S.M. O'Grady says, it's the soldier's best friend if you care for the working parts and let us be 'aving those springs released smartly in Company billets on wet forenoons and clickerty-click and one up the spout and you men must really cultivate the habit of treating this weapon with the very greatest care and there should be a healthy rivalry
among you--it should be a matter of very
proper pride and
Marry it man! Marry it!
Cherish her, she's your very own.
Coax it man coax it--it's delicately and ingeniously made--it's an instrument of precision--it costs us tax-payers, money -- I want you men to remember that.
Fondle it like a granny--talk to it--consider it as you would a friend - and when you ground these arms she's not a rooky's gas-pipe for greenhorns to tarnish.
You've known her hot and cold.
You would choose her from among many.
You know her by her bias, and by her exact error at 300, and by the deep scar at the small, by the fair flaw in the grain, above the lower sling-swivel--- but leave it under the oak.

Slung so, it swings its full weight, With you going blindly on all paws, it slews its whole length, to hang at your bowed neck like the Mariner's white oblation.
You drag past the four bright stones at the turn of Wood Support.

It is not to be broken on the brown stone under the gracious tree.
It is not to be hidden under your failing body.
Slung so, it troubles your painful crawling like a fugitive's irons.

The trees are very high in the wan signal-beam, for whose slow gyration their wounded boughs seem as malignant limbs, manoeuvring for advantage.
The trees of the wood beware each other
And under each a man sitting;
Their seemly faces carved in a sardonyx stone; as undiademed princes turn their gracious profiles in a hidden seal, so did these appear, under the changing light.

For that waning you would believe this flaxen head had for its broken pedestal these bent Silurian shoulders.

For the pale flares extinction you don’t know if under his close lids, his eye-balls watch you. You would say by the turn of steel at his white brow he is not of our men where he leans with his opn fist in Dai’s bosom against the White Stone.

Hung so about, you make between these your close escape.

The secret princes between the leaning trees have diadems given them.
Life the leveller hugs her impudent equality – she may proceed at once to less discriminating zones.

The Queen of the Woods has cut bright boughs of various flowering.
These knew her influential eyes. Her awarding hands can pluck for each their fragile prize.
She speaks to them according to precedence. She knows what's due to this elect society. She can choose twelve gentle-men.
She knows who is most lord between the high trees and on the open down.
Some she gives white berries
some she gives brown
Emil has a curious crown it's
made of golden saxifrage.
Fatty wears sweet-briar,
he will reign with her for a thousand years.
For Balder she reaches to fetch his.
Ulrich smiles for his myrtle wand.
That swine Lillywhite has daisies to his chain - you'd hardly credit it.
She plaits torques of equal splendour for Mr Jenkins and Billy Crower.
Hansel with Gronwy share dog-violets for a palm, where they lie in serious embrace beneath the twisted tripod.
Sion gets St. John's Wort -- that's fair enough.
Dai Great-coat, she can't find him anywhere -- she calls both high and low, she had a very special one for him.
She carries to Aneirin-in-the-nullah a rowan sprig, for the glory of Guenedota. You couldn't hear what she said to him, because she was careful for the Disciplines of the Wars.

At the gate of the wood you try a last adjustment, but slung so, it's an impediment, it's of detriment to your hopes, you had best be rid of it -- the sagging webbing and all and what's left of your two-fifty -- but it were wise to hold on to your mask.

You're clumsy in your feebleness, you implicate your tin-hat rim with the slack sling of it.
Let it lie for the dews to rust it, or ought you to decently cover the working parts.
Its dark barrel, where you leave it under the oak, reflects the solemn star that rises urgently from Cliff Trench.
It's a beautiful doll for us
it's the Last Reputable Arm.
But leave it--under the oak.
Leave it for a Cook's tourist to the Devastated Areas and crawl as far as you can and wait for the bearers.

-- David Jones, In Parenthesis