I sang as one
Who on a tilting deck sings
To keep their courage up, thought the wave hangs
That shall cut off their sun.
...
Lark, skylark, spilling your rubbed and round
Pebbles of sounds in air's still lake,
Whose widening circles fill the noon; yet none
Is known so small beside the sun:
...
One of us in the compartment stares
Out of his window the whole day long
With attentive mein, as if he knows,
There is hid in the journeying scene a song
...
Enter the dream-house, brothers and sisters, leaving
Your debts asleep, your history at the door:
This is the home for heroes, and this loving
...
They who in folly or mere greed
Enslaved religion, markets, laws,
Borrow our language now and bid
Us to speak up in freedom's cause.
...
Come, live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of peace and plenty, bed and board,
...
A frost came in the night and stole my world
And left this changeling for it - a precocious
Image of spring, too brilliant to be true:
White lilac on the window-pane, each grass-blade
...
Cecil Day-Lewis (or Day Lewis), (27 April 1904 – 22 May 1972) was an Anglo-Irish poet and the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake. He is the father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis and documentary filmmaker and television chef Tamasin Day-Lewis. In his autobiography The Buried Day (1960), he wrote "As a writer I do not use the hyphen in my surname -- a piece of inverted snobbery which has produced rather mixed results . . . .")
The Conflict
I sang as one
Who on a tilting deck sings
To keep their courage up, thought the wave hangs
That shall cut off their sun.
As storm-cocks sing,
Flinging their natural answer in the wind's teeth,
And care not if it is waste of breath
Or birth-control of spring.
As ocean-flyer clings
To height, to the last drop of spirit driving on
While yet ahead is land to be won
And work for wings.
Singing I was at peace,
Above the clouds, outside the ring:
For sorrow finds a swift release in song
And pride in poise.
Yet living here,
As one between two massive powers I live
Whom neutrality cannot save
Nor occupation cheer.
None such shall be left alive:
The innocent wing is soon shot down,
And private stars fade in the blood-red dawn
Where two worlds strive.
The red advance of life
Contracts pride, calls out the common blood,
Beats song into a single-blade,
Makes a depth-charge of grief.
Move then with new desires,
For where we used to build and love
Is no man's land, and only ghosts can live
Between two fires.
Not a comment on C Day Lewis, but on the poems listed here... No 4, 'Untitled', has the same poem as No 3, 'Come, live with me and be my love'. Would love to know what the poet ACTUALLY wrote under his 'Untitled' title!
This poem is very gay like me. i like men. my favorite man is Thomas saunders.
of course he didn't he's dead! But he did write a poem called'Requeim for the Living' in 1962 about nuclear Weapons, which I want a copy.
Im very gay i like and i still get breast fed by my mummy, also im inbred
ya yeet i killed a fetus and stuck it in my toenail then kicked a door, that how i feel about English