Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FROM WAR, 1919, by ARTHUR FIELD



Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FROM WAR, 1919, by                    
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.





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