Fleurs du Mal Magazine
Or see the index
Approach
Apparelled in a mask of joy till now,
I knew thee not. Asleep, I see thy face
More simply. Sorrow s leisure lets me trace
The nicer lines. Thy sealed lids, thy brow,
Thy lasting posture, purposes avow ;
In thy spent form resides a moveless grace.
A pageant was thy life, and in its place
I find a truth to feed and to endow
My heart. Thy wonted mask of joy belied
The meaning death s bare attitude makes clear.
From living gesture thought went often wide,
And I was poor interpreter ; but here,
Where it would seem our thoughts anew divide,
The steady silence draws thy spirit near.
Gladys Cromwell
(1885-1919)
Approach
From: Songs of the Dust, 1915
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Cromwell, Gladys, Gladys Cromwell
A Lark Above the Trenches 1916
Hushed is the shriek of hurtling shells: and hark!
Somewhere within that bit of soft blue sky-
Grand in his loneliness, his ecstasy,
His lyric wild and free – carols a lark.
I in the trench, he lost in heaven afar,
I dream of Love, its ecstasy he sings;
Doth lure my soul to love till like a star
It flashes into Life: O tireless wings
That beat love’s message into melody –
A song that touches in this place remote
Gladness supreme in its undying note
And stirs to life the soul of memory –
‘Tis strange that while you’re beating into life
Men here below and plunged in sanguine strife!
John William (Will) Streets
(1886 –1916)
A Lark Above the Trenches 1916
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: - Archive Tombeau de la jeunesse, Archive S-T, Natural history, Streets, Will, WAR & PEACE
Folded Power
Sorrow can wait,
For there is magic in the calm estate
Of grief; lo, where the dust complies
Wisdom lies.
Sorrow can rest,
Indifferent, with her head upon her breast;
Idle and hushed, guarded from fears;
Content with tears.
Sorrow can bide,
With sealèd lids and hands unoccupied.
Sorrow can fold her latent might,
Dwelling with night.
But Sorrow will rise
From her dream of sombre and hushed eternities.
Lifting a Child, she will softly move
With a mother’s love.
She will softly rise.
Her embrace the dying will recognize,
Lifting them gently through strange delight
To a clearer light.
Gladys Cromwell
(1885-1919)
Folded Power
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive C-D, Cromwell, Gladys, Gladys Cromwell
An meine Schwester
Wo du gehst wird Herbst und Abend,
Blaues Wild, das unter Bäumen tönt,
Einsamer Weiher am Abend.
Leise der Flug der Vögel tönt,
Die Schwermut über deinen Augenbogen.
Dein schmales Lächeln tönt.
Gott hat deine Lider verbogen.
Sterne suchen nachts Karfreitagskind
Deinen Stirnenbogen.
Georg Trakl
(1887 – 1914)
An meine Schwester, 1913
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: - Archive Tombeau de la jeunesse, Archive S-T, Trakl, Georg, Trakl, Georg, WAR & PEACE
A Soldier’s Funeral
No splendid show of solemn funeral rite,
No stricken mourners following his bier,
No peal of organ reaching thro’ his night,
Is rendered him whom now we bury here.
‘Tis but a soldier stricken in the fight,
A youth who flung his passion into life,
Flung scorn at Death, fought true for Freedom’s might,
Till Death did close his vision in the strife.
No splendid rite is here – yet lay him low,
Ye comrades of his youth he fought beside,
Close where the winds do sigh and wild flowers grow,
Where the sweet brook doth babble by his side.
No splendour, yet we lay him tenderly
To rest, his requiem the artillery.
John William (Will) Streets
(1886 –1916)
A Soldier’s Funeral
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: - Archive Tombeau de la jeunesse, Archive S-T, Streets, Will, WAR & PEACE
Nähe des Todes
O der Abend, der in die finsteren Dörfer der Kindheit geht.
Der Weiher unter den Weiden
Füllt sich mit den verpesteten Seufzern der Schwermut.
O der Wald, der leise die braunen Augen senkt,
Da aus des Einsamen knöchernen Händen
Der Purpur seiner verzückten Tage hinsinkt.
O die Nähe des Todes. Laß uns beten.
Jn dieser Nacht lösen auf lauen Kissen
Vergilbt von Weihrauch sich der Liebenden schmächtige Glieder.
Georg Trakl
(1887 – 1914)
Nähe des Todes
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: - Archive Tombeau de la jeunesse, Archive S-T, Trakl, Georg, Trakl, Georg, WAR & PEACE
Autumn Communion
This autumn afternoon
My fancy need invent
No untried sacrament.
Man can still commune
With Beauty as of old:
The tree, the wind’s lyre,
The whirling dust, the fire—
In these my faith is told.
Beauty warms us all;
When horizons crimson burn,
We hold heaven’s cup in turn.
The dry leaves gleaming fall,
Crumbs of mystical bread;
My dole of Beauty I break,
Love to my lips I take,
And fear is quieted.
The symbols of old are made new:
I watch the reeds and the rushes,
The spruce trees dip their brushes
In the mountain’s dusky blue;
The sky is deep like a pool;
A fragrance the wind brings over
Is warm like hidden clover,
Though the wind itself is cool.
Across the air, between
The stems and the grey things,
Sunlight a trellis flings.
In quietude I lean:
I hear the lifting zephyr
Soft and shy and wild;
And I feel earth gentle and mild
Like the eyes of a velvet heifer.
Love scatters and love disperses.
Lightly the orchards dance
In a lovely radiance.
Down sloping terraces
They toss their mellow fruits.
The rhythmic wind is sowing,
Softly the floods are flowing
Between the twisted roots.
What Beauty need I own
When the symbol satisfies?
I follow services
Of tree and cloud and stone.
Color floods the world;
I am swayed by sympathy;
Love is a litany
In leaf and cloud unfurled.
Gladys Cromwell
(1885-1919)
Autumn Communion
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: 4SEASONS#Autumn, Archive C-D, Cromwell, Gladys, Gladys Cromwell
Comrades
Those whom I’ve known, admired, ardently friended
Lie silent there wrapp’d in a soldier’s shroud;
Death broke their dreams, their aspirations ended,
These sanguine youth, noble, brave and proud.
Slowly they bear them ‘neath the dim star light
Unto their rest – the soldiers’ cemetery:
The chaplain chants a low, brief litany;
The nightingale flings rapture on the night.
Back to their Mother Earth this night return
Unnumbered youth along the far-flung line;
But ’tis for these my eyes with feeling burn,
That Memory doth erect a fadeless shrine –
For these I’ve known, admired, ardently friended
Stood by when Death their love, their youth swift ended.
John William (Will) Streets
(1886 –1916)
Comrades
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: - Archive Tombeau de la jeunesse, Archive S-T, Streets, Will, WAR & PEACE
Choice
Imperious Time, I must prefer
Thy just necessity:
Resign the silent, earlier
Beliefs grown dear to me.
The stillness left alternatives
To youth, a freedom wide
And dim as dreaming, but man lives,
And must one day decide.
There is a doom the years compel:
I must approach the goal
Decreed, where it behooves me dwell:
I must declare my soul;
Must speak and choose what stars pertain
To me ; needs must I rest
In their most intimate beams, remain
Committed and confessed.
I claim a tent of stars in place
Of heaven’s confusing dome:
A tent of stars in a dark space —
The sky must be my home.
Gladys Cromwell
(1885-1919)
Choice
From: Poems 1919
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive G-H, Cromwell, Gladys, Gladys Cromwell
Nacht im Schützengraben
Tief will sich der Himmel neigen,
Schwer von seiner Sternenlast.
Runde Leuchtraketen steigen
Auf zu seinem Blaudamast.
Rückwärts ist mein Kopf geglitten
Auf den Sand der Schulterwehr
Und mir ist, als wär ich mitten
In dem weißen Silbermeer.
Schüsse fallen, Rufe kommen,
Meine Hand kühlt kühlen Wind,
Und ich weiß kaum, traumbenommen,
Noch, was Stern, was Augen sind.
Gerhard Moerner
(1894-1917)
Aus: „Aus dem Felde“. Gedichte.
Kugelverlag, Hamburg 1917.
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: *War Poetry Archive, - Archive Tombeau de la jeunesse, Archive M-N, WAR & PEACE
Shelley in the Trenches 2nd May 1916
Impressions are like winds; you feel their cool
Swift kiss upon the brow, yet know not where
They sprang to birth: so like a pool
Rippled by winds from out their forest lair
My soul was stir’d to life; its twilight fled;
There passed across its solitude a dream
That wing’d with supreme ecstasy did seem;
That gave the kiss of life to long-lost dead.
A lark trill’d in the blue: and suddenly
Upon the wings of his immortal ode
My soul rushed singing to the ether sky
And found in visions, dreams, its real abode –
I fled with Shelly, with the lark afar,
Unto the realms where the eternal are.
John William (Will) Streets
(1886 –1916)
Shelley in the Trenches 2nd May 1916
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: - Archive Tombeau de la jeunesse, Archive S-T, Shelley, Percy Byssche, Streets, Will, WAR & PEACE
The Beggar
Showing his ill-made frame
And mumbling of troubles many,
Along a public street,
The cripple calls for a penny.
Inviting sympathy,
By his rags and his withered arm,
He follows and frets till we argue
A penny can do him no harm.
Just now, in this intimate room,
Sagacious, clever and witty,
Exposing his hardships, a Beggar
Beckoned his friends for pity.
Ugh! By displaying his pains,
By showing his heart was ashen,
By revealing his twisted life,
He played for a glance of compassion.
Strange how I longed to laugh ;
His feebleness was funny.
I thought : ” He’s only a Beggar
And affection is golden money.
Gladys Cromwell
(1885-1919)
The Beggar
From: Poems 1919
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive C-D, Cromwell, Gladys, Gladys Cromwell, WAR & PEACE
Thank you for reading Fleurs du Mal - magazine for art & literature