TOM KETTLE

1880-1916

Two simple words, charged now for some of us with sad and infinite memories. It is not the death of the Professor, nor of the soldier, nor of the politician--nor even of the poet or the essayist--that causes the heart-ache that we feel. It is the loss of that rare, charming, wondrous personality summed up in those two simple words, TOM KETTLE.

A genial cynic, a pleasant pessimist, an earnest trifler, he was made up of contradictions. A fellow of infinite jest--and infinite sadness. His prototypes were Hamlet or the Melancholy Jacques. Among the delightful essays he has left us in that charming little book, The Day's Burden, is one entitled "A new way of misunderstanding Hamlet." He was himself a veritable Hamlet in this twentieth century Ireland. One may ask, did he quite understand himself? Master of paradox, enunciator of enigma, he was a paradox and an enigma in, and to, himself. Shall we seek now to pluck out the heart of his mystery? The lines are hackneyed beyond hope, but in this instance they apply in truth.

The personality of Kettle had in it something subtle; something essential yet elusive; something not to be defined. He was a great talker in the Johnsonian sense. As a story-teller, it was not so much the point of his tale that counted as his telling of it. The divagations from the text in which he loved to indulge were the delight of his auditors. With truth it may be said that his rich humour, his brilliant, mordant wit, caused his listeners to hang upon his words. And his outlook was so wide, his soul so big, his mind so broad, and a deep love of humanity so permeated him that his talk, or one might more fittingly say, his discourse, was educating and uplifting. But he was a man of moods, descending from heights of Homeric humour to the depths of a divine despair. Those privileged to hear him thus expounding will cherish the memory while they live. We, too, as it were, have "seen Shelley plain." He charmed, he fascinated. This, in truth, describes him for his spell wrought even on those who actually disliked him.

In the numerous notices printed of him since he died much has been written of the promise of his career. More appropriate it would be to write of his performance. He crowded into thirty-six years of life far more than most men achieve in twice that span. Now the orator is silent, the brilliant wit has ceased to sparkle, the skilful pen will ply no more. Tom Kettle knows at last the answer to the riddle that baffled him, the Riddle of the Universe.

Well may we mourn--

For Lycidas is dead;

Young Lycidas: dead ere his prime,

And hath not left his peer.

 

WILLIAM DAWSON.

CONTENTS

PERSONAL

Dedication Sonnet: To my Wife
To my daughter Betty, the gift of God
On Leaving Ireland
Epigram

EARLY POEMS

To Young Ireland
Sowing
Dreams and Duty
A Song of Vengeance

TRANSLATIONS

1At Achensee, Tirol`_
1The Monks`_

MISCELLANEOUS

The Lady of Life
When others see us as we see ourselves
Ennui
Ballad Autumnal
The Lost Ball

POLITICAL

Parnell
The House of Lords: An Epitaph
Reason in Rhyme
Asquith in Dublin
Ulster
To Ireland

WAR POEMS

Paddy
Sergeant Mike O'Leary
A Nation's Freedom
A Song of the Irish Armies

Permission to reprint several of the poems in this Volume has been kindly granted by the proprietors of the Daily Chronicle, Freeman's Journal, Cork Examiner, Messrs. MAUNSEL & Co., Ltd.. and THE TALBOT PRESS

PERSONAL

"Memorial I would have

... a constant presence

with those that love me"

DEDICATION SONNET

TO MY WIFE

"Not the sea, only, wrecks the hopes of men,

Look deeper, there is shipwreck everywhere,"

So mourned the exquisite Roman's rich despair,

Too high in death for that ignoble pen.

Nero, his wrecker, is amply wrecked since then,

And all that Rome's a whiff of charnel air;

But to subdue Petronius' mal-de-mer

Have we found drugs? I pray you, What? and When?

 

Shipwreck, one grieves to say, retains its vogue:

Or let the keel win on in stouter fashion,

And look! your golden lie of Tir-na-n'Og

Is sunset and waste waters, chill and ashen--

Faith lasts? Nay, since I knew your yielded eyes,

I am content with sight .... of Paradise.

TO MY DAUGHTER BETTY,
THE GIFT OF GOD

(ELIZABETH DOROTHY)

In wiser days, my darling rosebud, blown

To beauty proud as was your mother's prime,

In that desired, delayed, incredible time,

You'll ask why I abandoned you, my own,

And the dear heart that was your baby throne,

To dice with death. And oh! they'll give you rhyme

And reason: some will call the thing sublime,

And some decry it in a knowing tone.

So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,

And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor,

Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,

Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,

But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed,

And for the secret Scripture of the poor.

 

the field, before Guillemont, Somme,

September 4, 1916.

ON LEAVING IRELAND

(JULY 14, 1916)

The pathos of departure is indubitable.

I never felt my own essay "On saying Good-Bye" so profoundly aux trÉfonds du coeur. The sun was a clear globe of blood which we caught hanging over Ben Edar, with a trail of pure blood vibrating to us across the waves. It dropped into darkness before we left the deck. Some lines came to me, suggested by a friend who thought the mood cynical.

As the sun died in blood, and hill and sea

Grew to an altar, red with mystery,

One came who knew me (it may be over-much)

Seeking the cynical and staining touch,

But I, against the great sun's burial

Thought only of bayonet-flash and bugle-call,

And saw him as God's eye upon the deep,

Closed in the dream in which no women weep,

And knew that even I shall fall on sleep.

EPIGRAM

If grief, like fire, smoked up against our sight,

The Earth were scarfÈd in eternal night.

EARLY POEMS

TO YOUNG IRELAND

(WRITTEN IN 1899)

Dead! art thou dead or sleepest, in this blank, twilight time,

When hearts are sere and pithless? Land of the sword and lyre!

Thy waxen lips are silent, thy brow is bound with rime,

Hast thou late wed with winter, child of earth's primal fire?

 

The sheathÈd blade rusts foully, through bitter, barren years,

And harp and pen are bond slaves, thralls to thy children's shame.

We garner cockle harvests, vain words and little fleers.

From waste lands sown with rancour, search them with proving flame!

 

We droop'd, stark sons of warfare, we blushed and slunk from day,

While Love and Truth and Honour died in mere fretful fume.

Free brain, free brawn, is given us, then sweep we from our way

These shamers of our mother, this idle, noisome spume.

 

For, lo! an army gathers around a standard clean;

I gird me dinted armour, and press to touch the throng.

Hark! Hark! The minstrels' war-hymn in very strength serene,

My harp is harsh of utterance, yet take a pupil's song.

 

Then stout heart join our battle! who hail an eastern sun,

Our toil shall set this people upon earth's purest height.

Then faint heart join our battle! and if our sands be run,

At least we caoin a swan-lay upon the edge of night.

SOWING

(WRITTEN IN 1899)

One mocked: "Thy brain is mad with wine;

The fairies spin the threads of night,

And pour their vials of sour blight

About the roots of health, yet thine

And thou, ye garner into verse

Bright flowers to trick a solemn hearse:

The cowslip, maiden-love of spring,

The burning incense of the rose,

The austere lily, her that blows

By winter's marge--each gracious thing

Past or unborn. Weak, trusting fool!

Old Time shall file thee in his school."

 

"I know not Time, his last or first;

With master hands I despoil all

His hoarded sweetness and his gall.

I crush the aeons for my thirst,

And so am mad. Pencils of fire

Limn visions of soul-large desire.

 

In Faith I cast on frozen ground

An obscure life of sweat and tears;

In the far Autumn of the years

Men reap full harvests, springing round,

And judge them gifts of kindly chance,

My deed laughs through each mellow lance."

DREAMS AND DUTY

Life is an inconstant April laughing into May,

Weeping with the aftergust of March storms laid away,

Light o' love! Her mood is gracious, fondling sunbeams stray

Out across the cloud-smoke purple of her cloud robes gray.

Let us dream among the daisies, troll a roundelay

Where the gorse gold is lavished, and the lilies pray,

Mary's nuns, whose stainless gift is Heaven's chaliced ray,

Let us twine a wreath of science, let us play our play,

Ere we fight the fight of ages, one sweet prelude-day.

*      *      *      *      *

The stranger heard and mocked us from the usurped throne,

Reeled in his scornful laughter, eater of hearts, blood-blown.

But the Lord God heard and heeded, therefore we do not moan;

For He has whispered to us, 'The secret shuttles fly,

Ye know not warp or weaver, yet neither swerve or sigh,

The eater of hearts shall wither, the drinker of blood shall die.

I have set you labour, work it; I will give you increase,

For first is winter-ploughing, after, my guerdon, peace;

Ye shall pluck strength from sorrow, ripe when the sorrows cease;

Ye shall win strength and wisdom to break the stranger's rule,

But if ye slink and babble ye are but as the fools,

Ye are but as the stranger, fit for the thorny schools."

A SONG OF VENGEANCE

FOR COMMANDANT SCHEEPERS
(Murdered January 18, 1902)

It is done inexpiably; thrust him deep in shameful clay,

Charge his name with every foulness, rule the world's ear as you may--

But the shadow at your banquet that you cannot put away!

 

Weak you thought him, sickness-vanquished, given to your eager hate.

So you played him and you slew him with your feline shows of state,

Weak--and lo! the sanctifying touch of death has made him great.

 

As a seed that broadening splits the rock on which a palace stands,

As a trickling breach that godlike parts one land in hostile lands,

Is the memory of Scheepers and his slaying at your hands.

 

Hill and plain and stream shall guard it, town and fireside, phrase and song;

Young men's unsubdued aspiring, old men's striving wise and strong;

And though Hope die, Hatred may not for remembrance of his wrong.

 

Murdered leader--may God fold you in the mercy of His temple,

Sleep as sleep our unborn children, bravest hero and example--

Float the flag or sink for ever, your red eric shall be ample.

TRANSLATIONS

AT ACHENSEE, TIROL

(From the German of A. Pickler.--Died, 1893)

The old path up, the wood's ranked gloomy legions,

The lap and the rustle of the lake behind,

And, roused by these, from Death's more timely regions

The old thoughts fluttering in a lonely mind;

 

About my way the pine-stems thick and thicker

Huddle, the mossed stone drips abundantly,

And, thro' the screen of woven branches, flicker

The bright and heaving waves of Achensee.

 

Pinewood and primrose scents, the air has mixt them;

Poised butterflies, a shining sun-bathed fleet,

Sky's blue, gaunt granite jags, and buoyed betwixt them,

The cloud-fleece flushing with the day's defeat.

 

The spell is on me, nor can aught deliver;

Slowly my spirit fails from life and light,

And Past and Future like a pauseless river,

Slide darkly down into a darker night.

 

The red glow wans, the blackbird's trill and quaver

Dies in the sudden gloom, the broad world sleeps;

And, mixed with moon-fire flakes, the billows waver,

As though dead hands tossed vainly in their deeps.

 

I think of the high dead, and that all-daring

First bard whom Orcus' self might not withstand,

I think of his vast love, and fruitless faring,

To pluck one rose from Proserpine's hand.

 

The Past is an ill riddle, over-subtle,

The Thing-to-Be a rumour of a cloud,

Would know the last weft of Fate's whirring shuttle?

You shall know, when they wind you in your shroud.

 

Innsbruck, 18th July, 1904.

THE MONKS

A translation from EMILE VERHAEREN.
Dedicated to Father Benedict, 1905.

I do invoke you here, Monks Apostolical,

Fountains of dawn, torches of faith, wrought candlesticks;

Stars shedding day across the ages mystical;

Builders whose walls for scutcheon bear the Crucifix.

 

Hermits who sat on white, high mountains for a throne;

Hewn marble quick with will, and strength, and angry truth;

Preachers with arms uplift and long sleeves loosely blown

Over bowed heads, and hearts gnawn of the sateless tooth.

 

Windows athrob with dawn, rich with all Eastern dyes;

Vases of chastity whose fulness might not cease;

Mirrors whose depths enfold, as lakes the dreaming skies,

Hills where our dreams have breath, fair valleys brimmed with peace.

 

Seers whose souls, foreknowing death's enfranchisement,

Walked secretly where walks the mere flesh of no feet;

Titans whose breath was more than squadroned argument;

Kings strange to Rome set up in Rome's imperial seat.

 

Swords hung above the pride of kings and emperors;

Lords of a prouder crown and a more grievious loss;

Warriors whose flag was spread in more tremendous wars,

Slayers of heresy with great blows of the Cross.

 

Arches and aqueducts of Christian sanctity,

Pillars of silver, channels pouring from the East

Rivers of grace at which the peoples thirstily

Have drunk, and quaffed desire for the unending Feast.

 

Tocsins with war and wounds in your most sombre roll;

Clarions whose proud, full throats salute the captain Christ;

Towers of the sun, whose crosses wear an aureole

Litten of that far Sun Who was the Sacrificed.

MISCELLANEOUS

THE LADY OF LIFE

I sat with her, and spoke right goldenly

Of love and beauty, and because her hair

Brushed me, I plucked down Sirius like a pear,

To braid it, and had laughter for my fee;

Yea, suing her to heavier slavery.

Had all but plucked the fruitage of her lips,

When, lo! inked clouds and absolute eclipse,

Courteous, but unmistakable ennui.

 

Then did I mind me of the sorrow wailed

Thro' poets' books, and how the streaming torch

Of suns greater than Sirius has failed,

And as I shambled out the menial's door

I heard new feet sound in the statued porch

And salutations I had heard before.

WHEN OTHERS SEE US AS WE SEE OURSELVES!

Day, with his blotting trumpet, overthrew

My city of dream, and, with his marshalled spears,

My thought that had the unperforming years

Amended and laid the base of heaven true;

But pitying, signed me priest with chrismal dew,

And I went telling of expatriate tears,

Of Hate cast out with all his sworded peers,

And tower-tops spiring to the gods anew.

One gibed, one wept, one with his drowsÉd air

Chilled me to very stone, but no man hearkened;

So to my love I went--ah! once love darkened

Her eyes, and in that darkness I could hide--

Why should they couch them? In her alien stare

I knew she knew all Christs I had denied.

ENNUI

I saw the loath moon rise,

The sun go sweatily down;

There was famine of sleep in his eyes;

She was a floating frown.

 

They nodded heavily

Over an ancient roof,

With a pout o' the shoulders, she,

He with a grind o' the hoof.

 

And the moon said to the sun:

"Another day to irk us!"

The sun to the touzled moon,

"Imagine it a circus."

BALLAD AUTUMNAL

(In which Any Old Fool of an idealistic turn, explains--probably without the palest colour of truth--to Any Other, infected with the same disease, the failure of their lives, labours, and dreams, and the triumph of the wise of this world.)

Hair greying, ashen eyes, uncomely ridges,

Autumn of things ill-done, and things undone:

How all that water, slipped beneath the bridges,

Chills the adieux of our defeated sun!

What paltry, unresisted jettison

Of dear hopes held, and there the graveyard West,

With mud, miasma, mastless hulks, and midges!--

We have not lived as wisely as the rest.

 

That wasteful trick of yours, that gust prodigious

Of dreams too great for their comparison,

Blew stars ablaze, but drowned us in the ditches.

Sad, generous, valiant, tired ephemeron!

Had we but coined the vision when it shone

We, too, had ruled, and mocked the dispossessed.

Well! we have rags, the prudent have the riches--

We have not lived as wisely as the rest.

 

They squeezed us, and forgot: your Je m'en fiche's

Struck in too bloodily to pass for fun.

Our bread was nibbled by the water-witches,

All that we have is given, and is gone.

Some penny, wheedled for a currant bun,

Some shirtless, soapless starveling, uncaressed,

Still thanks us for, but not our fed ambitious--

We have not lived as wisely as the rest.

 

 

ENVOI

 

Prince, lift your heart up out of Acheron,

Death bows us gravely to that cleaner test.

Yea! when all books are closed, all races run,

We may have lived as wisely as the rest.

THE LOST BALL

(A golfing rhapsody suggested by "The Lost Chord.")

Playing one day at the seaside, I was topping my balls on the tees,

And the sand and the bent were littered with fragments of double D's;

Piffle supreme I was playing, and varying "slice" with "pull,"

But I hit one ball a wallop like a kick of a Spanish bull.

 

It whistled its way towards Heaven in a rocket's magic flight;

It cancelled the crimson sunset like the shroud of a moonless night;

It knocked the paint off a rainbow and scattered the stars like bees;

And sped thro' the stellar spaces as tho' it would never cease.

 

It looped the loop like PÉgoud in parabolic curves;

It was salve to my wounded feelings and balm to my ruffled nerves;

It clove my opponent's gizzard like the stab of a Lascar's knife;

And produced the hardest swearing I have ever heard in my life.

 

I have sought in the bent and the bushes that one magnificent ball;

It may be Antartic crystals were broken by its fall;

It may be that Death as Caddy may light on the spot it fell;

I may have holed out in Heaven or find myself trapped in Hell.

POLITICAL

PARNELL

(For the unveiling, 1st October, 1911)

Tears will betray all pride, but when ye mourn him,

Be it in soldier wise;

As for a captain who hath gently borne him,

And in the midnight dies.

 

Fewness of words is best; he was too great

For ours or any phrase.

Love could not guess, nor the slipped hound of hate

Track that soul's secret ways.

 

Signed with a sign, unbroken, unrevealed,

His Calvary he trod;

So let him keep, where all world-wounds are healed

The silences of God.

 

Yet is he Ireland's too: a flaming coal

Lit at the stars, and sent

To burn the sin of patience from her soul,

The scandal of content.

 

A name to be a trumpet of attack;

And, in the evil stress,

For England's iron No! to fling her back

A grim granatic Yes.

 

He taught us more, this best as it was last:

When comrades go apart

They shall go greatly, cancelling the past,

Slaying the kindlier heart.

 

Friendship and love, all clean things and unclean,

Shall be as drifted leaves,

Spurned by our Ireland's feet, that queenliest Queen

Who gives not but receives.

 

So freedom comes, and comes no other wise;

He gave--"The Chief"--gave well;

Limned in his blood across your clearing skies

Look up and read; Parnell!