Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DESPOTISMS, by LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY


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First Line: From hedgerows where aromas fain would be
Last Line: The golden english heads like harvest grain.
Subject(s): World War I; First World War


I. THE MOTOR:1905

FROM hedgerows where aromas fain would be
New volleyed odours execrably rise;
The flocks, with hell-smoke in their patient eyes,
Into the ditch from bawling ruin flee:
Spindrift of one abominated sea
Along all roads in wrecking fury flies
Till on young strangled leaf, on bloom that dies,
In this far plot it writes a rune for me.

Vast intimate tyranny! Nature dispossessed
Helplessly hates thee, whose symbolic flare
Lights up (with what reiterance unblest!)
Entrails of horror in a world thought fair.
False God of pastime thou, vampire of rest,
Augur of what pollution, what despair?

II. THE WAR: 1915

Speed without ruth, seedsman of vile success,
Accustomed sight to ne'er-accustomed view!
Am I not vindicate who strongly knew
Some portent there of pregnant ugliness?
The dooms are in; my soul hath won her guess.
That which formed thee and franchised, had the cue
To push all rudeness forward, and was due
To spawn ere long the sovereign menace. Yes,

Horror has come, has come! Horror set high,
And drunk with boundless access, whirls amain:
Lost on the wind is Belgia's holy cry,
And Poland's hope shrinks underground again,
And France is singing to her wounds, where lie
The golden English heads like harvest grain.





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