Classic and Contemporary Poetry
FROM WAR, 1919, by ARTHUR FIELD First Line: Honour is the bondage of a fool Last Line: Its virtue is, it must go underground. Subject(s): Hypocrisy; Night; Religion; Bedtime; Theology | ||||||||
Honour is the bondage of a fool; Faith, desire harboured in deceit. When one would have another as his tool He calls him friend and snares his silly feet. Work is a curse that man may soon forget His misery by adding to the years A slime of swinish muck that none regret But those who have the fate to be his heirs. Hope is a lie to keep our hands from death; Law the defence of weaklings for the gold By which their fathers poisoned every breath Babbling to ask why truth was never told. Truth is a word that hypocrites parade When fortune helps the side they did not choose. As strength, intelligence, and beauty fade Religion is the paint and hair we use. Philosophy is proved a hungry jest; All jests are children of a brainless hate; Morality, a filthy gaudy chest In which men hide their thoughts degenerate. Wisdom, the coward's intrigue to protect His brain from passion and his heart from pain. Justice, the rope with which existence wrecked Is choked lest it prove troublesome again. Immortal being, a ragged two-edged knife That chills despair with Night of endless woes And goads on ignorance to empty strife To win to heaven and mock its braver foes. Love is the prince and master of all lies, That fills the world with madness, fear and lust: A devil luminous that stabs and flies, Lurking to break the will to bloody dust. Man is a brute, without the brute's rough tongue And woodland death that kills without a sound. None can be sure from what the race is sprung: Its virtue is, it must go underground. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MYSTIC BOUNCE by TERRANCE HAYES MATHEMATICS CONSIDERED AS A VICE by ANTHONY HECHT UNHOLY SONNET 11 by MARK JARMAN SHINE, PERISHING REPUBLIC by ROBINSON JEFFERS THE COMING OF THE PLAGUE by WELDON KEES A LITHUANIAN ELEGY by ROBERT KELLY |
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