In the opening pages of George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia (1938) he describes meeting an Italian militiaman in Barcelona in December 1936 when he joined the fight against Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Orwell added more details (and a poem) to the story of that meeting in his 1942 essay Looking Back on...
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My love & I walked in the dark Of many a scented night in June; My love & I did oft remark How yellow was the waning moon, How yellow was the moon. My love & I walked in the sun Of many a golden summer day; My love &...
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Dear Friend: allow me for a little while To speak without those high & starry lies Wherein we use to drown our thoughts until Even ourselves believe them. Hear then, first, Not all the screams of twenty thousand victims Broken on the wheel or plunged in boiling oil Could pain...
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A broadcast talk in the B.B.C.’s Overseas Service, 14 May 1941; printed in The Listener, 12 June 1941. I shall start by quoting the poem called “Felix Randal”, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, the well-known English poet — he was a Roman Catholic priest — who died in 1893: Felix Randal the farrier, O is...
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The Adelphi, December 1936 A happy vicar I might have been Two hundred years ago, To preach upon eternal doom And watch my walnuts grow; But born, alas, in an evil time, I missed that pleasant haven, For the hair has grown on my upper lip And the clergy are all clean-shaven.
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Empty as death and slow as pain The days went by on leaden feet; And parson’s week had come again As I walked down the little street. Without, the weary doves were calling, The sun burned on the banks of mud; Within, old maids were caterwauling A dismal tale of...
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When I was young and had no sense, In far-off Mandalay I lost my heart to a Burmese girl As lovely as the day. Her skin was gold, her hair was jet, Her teeth were ivory; I said “For twenty silver pieces, Maiden, sleep with me.”
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Written for Jacintha Buddicom. Christmas 1918. Our minds are married, but we are too young For wedlock by the customs of this age When parent homes pen each in separate cage And only supper-earning songs are sung. Times past, when medieval woods were green, Babes were betrothed, and that betrothal brief. Remember Romeo in...
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Written for Jacintha Buddicom. Autumn 1918. So here are you, and here am I, Where we may thank our gods to be; Above the earth, beneath the sky, Naked souls alive and free.
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The Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard, 21 July 1916 No stone is set to mark his nation’s loss, No stately tomb enshrines his noble breast, Not e’en the tribute of a wooden cross Can mark this hero’s rest. He needs them not, his name untarnished stands Remindful of the mighty deeds he worked, Footprints...
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