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larryhammerFor Poetry Monday:
Dry August Burned, Walter de la Mare
Dry August burned. A harvest hare
Limp on the kitchen table lay,
Its fur blood-blubbered, eye astare,
While a small child that stood near by
Wept out her heart to see it there.
Sharp came the clop of hoofs, the clang
Of dangling chain, voices that rang
Out like a leveret she ran,
To feast her glistening bird-clear eyes
On a team of field artillery
Gay, to maneuvers, thudding by.
Spur and gun and limber plate
Flashed in the sun. Alert, elate,
Noble horses, foam at lip,
Harness, stirrup, holster, whip,
She watched the sun-tanned soldiery,
Till dust-white hedge had hidden away —
Its din into a rumour thinned —
The laughing, jolting, wild array:
And then — the wonder and tumult gone —
Stood nibbling a green leaf, alone,
Her dark eyes, dreaming. . . . She turned, and ran,
Elf-like, into the house again.
The hare had vanished. . . . “Mother,” she said,
Her tear-stained cheek now flushed with red,
“Please, may I go and see it skinned?”
From 1938. I usually think of de la Mare as a peri-WWI writer (Come Hither was published in 1923), but he lived until 1956 and was still writing (and winning awards) until close to his death.
---L.
Subject quote from Jeremy, Pearl Jam.
Dry August Burned, Walter de la Mare
Dry August burned. A harvest hare
Limp on the kitchen table lay,
Its fur blood-blubbered, eye astare,
While a small child that stood near by
Wept out her heart to see it there.
Sharp came the clop of hoofs, the clang
Of dangling chain, voices that rang
Out like a leveret she ran,
To feast her glistening bird-clear eyes
On a team of field artillery
Gay, to maneuvers, thudding by.
Spur and gun and limber plate
Flashed in the sun. Alert, elate,
Noble horses, foam at lip,
Harness, stirrup, holster, whip,
She watched the sun-tanned soldiery,
Till dust-white hedge had hidden away —
Its din into a rumour thinned —
The laughing, jolting, wild array:
And then — the wonder and tumult gone —
Stood nibbling a green leaf, alone,
Her dark eyes, dreaming. . . . She turned, and ran,
Elf-like, into the house again.
The hare had vanished. . . . “Mother,” she said,
Her tear-stained cheek now flushed with red,
“Please, may I go and see it skinned?”
From 1938. I usually think of de la Mare as a peri-WWI writer (Come Hither was published in 1923), but he lived until 1956 and was still writing (and winning awards) until close to his death.
---L.
Subject quote from Jeremy, Pearl Jam.
no subject
Date: 14 March 2023 03:40 am (UTC)I can think of only two examples: one is Medusa--you see her and you turn to stone. The other is the horror-movie trope where seeing a thing dooms you in a certain way.
And yet as I turn it over in my head, that magic is just a vast foreshortening of what alway-always is happening: we witness things and that changes us.
The child was hare-like, but the flash of arms and the accoutrements of war transformed her from prey to predator.
Well done, de la Mare.
no subject
Date: 14 March 2023 02:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 14 March 2023 02:26 pm (UTC)