Constantinople

"I suddenly realise that the ambition of my life has been, since I was two, to go on a military expedition against Constantinople.", Letter from Rupert Brooke. (Died at Scyros, April 23rd, 1915.)

JUSTINIAN.

Does the church stand I raised
Against the unchristened East?
Still do my ancient altars bear
The sacrificial feast?

My jewels are they bright,
My marbles and my paint,
Wherewith I glorified the Lord
And many a martyred Saint?

And does my dome still float
Above the Golden Horn?
And do my priests on Christmas Day
Still sing that Christ was born?

EUROPE.

Though dust your house, Justinian,
Still stands your lordliest shrine,
But the dark men who walk therein,
Know not of bread nor wine.

They fell long since upon your stones,
And made your colours dim,
Their priests who pray on Christmas Day
They sing no Christmas hymn.

But a voice at evening goes
From every climbing tower,
Crying a word you never heard,
A name of desert power.

CONSTANTINE PALAEOLOGUS.

For seven hundred years
We gripped a weakening blade,
Keeping the gateway of the West
With none to give us aid.

Till at the last they broke
What Constantine had built,
And by the shattered wall the blood
Of Constantine was spilt.

Do men remember still
The manner of my death,
How after all those failing years
I at the last kept faith?

EUROPE.

They know it for a bygone thing
True but indifferent,
For many a fight has come to pass
Since to the wall you went.

Westward and northward, Emperor,
Poured on that bloody brood,
Till those must turn to save themselves
Who had known not gratitude.

One fought them on the Middle Sea,
One at Vienna's gate,
And then the kings of Christendom
Watched the red tide abate.

Till in the end Byzantium
Heard a returning war;
But still a Mehmet holds your tomb...
Keep silence ... ask no more.

John Collings Squire, Sir

John Collings Squire, also known as Sir John Squire, was an influential British poet, writer, historian, and influential literary editor of the early 20th century. He is best known for his role as editor of the London Mercury, a powerful literary journal of the time. Squire was a leading figure in the Georgian poetry movement, which sought to return English poetry to its traditional form and diction.

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    I
    Queen of a double empire still she stands,
    And watches with superb indifferent eyes
    The eager wooing of Imperial hands
    Towards so fair and coveted a prize.

    Royal and imperial suitors has she known
    Pass one by one across her dreaming years,
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    And some have passed away in blood and tears;

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    Since the first Constantine in sweeping cloak
    Her seven hills with broad unhurrying pace
    Measured, and rested not till Heaven spoke.

    A haughty fatalist Byzantium waits
    What chance the storing centuries bring forth:
    Another lover almost at the gates,
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DIED OF WOUNDS RECEIVED AT THE DARDANELLES.


Where stern grey busts of gods and heroes old
Frown down upon the corridors' chill stone,
On which the sunbeam's amber pale is thrown
From leaf-fringed windows, one of quiet mould
Gazed long at those white chronicles which told
Of honours that the stately School had known.
He read the names: and wondered if his own
Would ever grace the walls in letters bold.

He knew not that he for the School would gain
A greater honour with a greater price -
That, no long years of work, but bitter pain
And his rich life, he was to sacrifice -
Not in a University's grey peace,
But on the hilly sun-baked Chersonese.

H.M.S. "Manica,"
    Dardanelles, 1915.

Paul Bewsher

Belisarius

I am poor and old and blind;
The sun burns me, and the wind
    Blows through the city gate
And covers me with dust
From the wheels of the august
    Justinian the Great.

It was for him I chased
The Persians o'er wild and waste,
    As General of the East;
Night after night I lay
In their camps of yesterday;
    Their forage was my feast.

For him, with sails of red,
And torches at mast-head,
    Piloting the great fleet,
I swept the Afric coasts
And scattered the Vandal hosts,
    Like dust in a windy street.

For him I won again
The Ausonian realm and reign,
    Rome and Parthenope;
And all the land was mine
From the summits of Apennine
    To the shores of either sea.

For him, in my feeble age,

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Letters Of The Dead

A letter came from Dick to-day;
A greeting glad he sends to me.
He tells of one more bloody fray,
Of how with bomb and rifle they
Have put their mark for all to see
Across rock-ribbed Gallipoli.

How are you doing? Hope all's well,
I in great nick, and like the work.
Though there may be a brimstone smell,
And other pungent hints of Hell,
Not Satan's self can make us shirk
Our task of hitting up the Turk.

You bet old Slacks is not half bad
He knows his business in a scrim.
He gets cold steel, or we are glad
To stop him with a bullet, lad.
Or sling a bomb his hair to trim;
But, straight, we throw no mud at him.

He fights and falls, and comes again,
And knocks our charging lines about.
He's game at heart, and tough in grain...

Edward

P. A. Munch (1863)

(See Note 20)

Many forms belong to greatness.
He who now has left us bore it
As a doubt that made him sleepless,
But at last gave revelation, -
As a sight-enhancing power,
That gave visions joined with anguish
Over all beyond our seeing, -
As a flight on labor's pinions
From the thought unto the certain,
Thence aloft to intuition, -
Restless haste and changeful ardor,
God-inspired and unceasing,
Through the wide world ever storming,
Took its load of thoughts and doubtings,
Bore them, threw them off, - and took them,
Never tired, never listless.

Still! for he had one haven of rest:
Family-life peace-bestowing!
Powers of light gave repose to his breast,
Calm 'mid the strife of his knowing.

Softly with music his wife led...

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Presage Of Victory

I


Then first I knew, seeing that bent grey head,
How England honours all her thousand dead.
Then first I knew how faith through black grief burns,
Until the ruined heart glows while it yearns
For one that never more returns--
Glows in the spent embers of its pride
For one that careless lived and fearless died.
And then I knew, then first,
How everywhere Hope from her prison had burst--
On every hill, wide dale, soft valley's lap,
In lonely cottage clutch'd between huge downs,
And streets confused with streets in clanging towns--
Like spring from winter's jail pouring her sap
Into the idle wood of last year's trees.
Then first I knew how the vast world-disease
Would die away, and England upon her seas
Shake every scab of sickness; toward new sk...

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