Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MANUSCRIPT POEM SENT TO OXFORD & CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL CERTIFICATE AWARDERS, by ALFRED DENNIS GODLEY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MANUSCRIPT POEM SENT TO OXFORD & CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL CERTIFICATE AWARDERS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Me, for the oxford and the cambridge board
Last Line: Such schools as need them are enclosed herewith.
Alternate Author Name(s): Godley, A. D.
Subject(s): Mountain Climbing


ME, for the Oxford and the Cambridge Board
Awarding marks, a far from cheerful game,
To Brecon, Bromsgrove, Southwold, Surbiton,
And Ystrad Meurig, well-remembered name!
Me, labouring thus, in summers long agone,
To swell my scanty hoard,
This hope would solace -- 'All things have an end:
In time (methought) a train with me inside
From dusty Dijon and its champaign wide
To Jura's heights will crawlingly ascend:

'Then shall I haply in a dawn divine
Drink coffee at Pontarlier, or some
Such favoured spot, 'mid uplands drenched with dew':
(BLEST be Lord Haldane's Spiritual Home
And Kaiser Wilhelm and his Junker crew
From Krupp to Falkenhayn!)
'And subsequently shall my breakfast make
On cates Helvetian, which immortals eat,
Surveying from my elevated seat
The lucent levels of Lemanus' lake.'

Such thoughts could cheer me: also how that I,
All in the fullness of accomplished days,
From Visp or Sion or perchance from Sierre
Would climb the valley's unforgotten ways,
And taste the fragrance of a purer air,
And presently espy,
Guarding the gate of some Valaisian pass,
The gleaming peak, the glacier seen afar,
Rising above the pine-woods (DAMN ALL WAR) --
The cliffs of Collon or the snows of Saas ...

Of suchlike stuff my memories consist:
Of occupations and of countries flat
Piget, it irks me: and I do confess
That, if it took me frequently like that,
I should at last be neither more nor less
Than a Pacificist,
A craven void of principle and pith.
Excuse my weakness: Feci -- I have done --
It isn't chronic .... My Reports upon
Such Schools as need them are enclosed herewith.





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