# Marlborough and other poems/Notes

NOTES
P. 3 (I). Barbury Camp is on the northern escarpment of the Marlborough downs, between five and six miles north by west from Marlborough. The camp on the summit is of pre-Roman origin. The preference for rain and windy weather, shown in this and other poems in the book, has suggested the poem entitled "Sorley's Weather" by Captain Robert Graves (Fairies and Fusiliers, 1917) which ends with the verse,
Yet rest there, Shelley, on the sill, For though the winds come frorely I'm away to the rain-blown hill And the ghost of Sorley.
P. 6 (II). Printed in The Marlburian, 28 July 1913. In this case, and in a few other cases, the text in the book varies slightly from that given in The Marlburian. In these variations the author's manuscript has been followed.
P. 8 (III). The Marlburian, 3 December 1913. East Kennet is a village on the Kennet between four and five miles west of Marlborough. A correspondent, who is familiar with the district, thinks that the church seen by the author from the cornfield was not that of East Kennet but the neighbouring church of West Overton.
P. 10 (IV). The Marlburian, 9 October 1913. This poem, said the author, in sending a copy of it home from Germany, "has too much copy from Meredith in it, but I value it as being (with 'Return') a memorial of my walk to Marlborough last September" (1913). The scenery of this walk is recalled in XXXVI (pp. 83, 84). P. 11, line 2: hedge's, bird's; the apostrophe was misplaced in editions 1 to 3.
P. 15 (VI). The Marlburian, 9 October 1913. This poem is a result of the same walk as IV and V. Liddington Castle is about seven miles north by east from ​Marlborough and, like Barbury Camp, guards the northern frontier of the downs. Describing a walk three months before, the author wrote, "I then scaled Liddington Castle, which is no more a castle than I am, but a big hill with a fine Roman camp on the top, and a view all down the Vale of the White Horse to the north and the Kennet valley to the south. I sat there for about an hour, reading Wild Life in a Southern County, with which I had come armed—the most appropriate place in the world to read it from, as it was on Liddington Castle that Richard Jefferies wrote it and many others of his books, and as it is Jefferies' description of how he saw the country from there." Line 7: Coate, a village to the south (now a suburb) of Swindon, and the birthplace of Jefferies.
P. 16 (VII). The Marlburian, 9 October 1913. This poem is a lament over the departure of a Marlborough master, the laureate of the school, who had resigned and left Marlborough at the end of the previous summer term. The author's acquaintance with him was entirely an out-of-school one. See note on XXXVI. Line 1: Granham hill, on the opposite side of the Kennet from Marlborough College. The horse is a rather inferior specimen of the "white horses," cut out in the chalk, of which there are other and more famous examples in the Wiltshire and Berkshire downs. It was cut by boys of a local proprietary school in 1804. Line 3: 'Four Miler, the school name for Four Mile Clump, so called because it lies at the fourth milestone on the old Swindon Road; it is in the same direction as Barbury Camp and about a mile short of it. Line 19: toun o' touns, one of several echoes in the poem of J. B.'s school songs "The Scotch Marlburian" and "All Aboard."
P. 17 (VIII). The Marlburian, 10 February 1914. Oare Hill is on the north-eastern border of Pewsey Vale between three and four miles from Marlborough ​College. West Woods are on the western side of the valley and nearer Marlborough.
P. 26 (X). Line 11: Clinton Stiles has not been identified and is probably imaginary.
P. 29 (XI). This poem was sent to a friend in December 1914. The author wiote, "I have tried for long to express in words the impression that the land north of Marlborough must leave.... Simplicity, paucity of words, monotony almost, and mystery are necessary. I think I have got it at last." Sending it home, along with a number of others, in April 1915, he described it as "the last of my Marlborough poems." Line 7: the signpost, which figures here as well as elsewhere (pp. 76, 83) in the poems, stands at "the junction of the grass tracks on the Aldbourne [Poulton] downs—to Ogbourne, Marlborough, Mildenhall, and Aldbourne. It stands up quite alone."
P. 33 (XII). The Marlburian, 31 October 1912. Line 2: Court, the quadrangle, surrounded by classrooms, hall, chapel, and college houses, and intersected by a lime-tree avenue between the gate and C House. This house (to which the author belonged) was the old mansion of the Seymours, built in the middle of the seventeenth century, and is the only ancient part of the college buildings. Line 6: sweat (school slang), run. P. 34, line 1: Four Miler, see note on VII.
P. 36 (XIII). The Marlburian, 11 November 1912. Line 2: kish (pronounced kïsh), a flat cushion which folds double and is used by the boys as a book-carrier. The "bloods" (or athletic aristocrats of the school) affect garish colours (loud and gay) for the lining of their kishes. Line 4: barnes (school slang), trousers. The school rules for dress are slightly relaxed for "bloods." Line 11: forty-cap, for football, equivalent to about second fifteen—obtained by the author a year after these verses were written.
​P. 40 (XIV). The Marlburian, 10 July 1913.
P. 45 (XV). The Marlburian, 31 October 1912.
P. 48 (XVI). The Marlburian, 19 December 1912
The lines
I know that there is beauty where the low streams run, And the weeping of the willows and the big sunk sun,
are perhaps the only lines in the book which recall the scenery of the author's Cambridge home.
P. 51 (XVII). The Marlburian, 25 February 1913. This poem, as there printed, was preceded by the explanation, "Early in January a man, without any conceivable reason for doing so, drowned himself in the ——. The verdict at the inquest was, as is usual in such cases, 'Suicide during temporary insanity.' This is the truth." Line 18: river, by mistake printed river's in editions 1 to 3.
P. 54 (XVIII). The Marlburian, 13 March 1913. Line 15: the highway and the way, cp. Isaiah XXXV. 8.
P. 56 (XIX). The Marlburian, 10 July 1913. The rookery referred to is evidently that in the Wilderness, lying between C House and the bathing-place, and visible from the author's dormitory window. Underneath the trees in the Wilderness a good deal of rubbish (rusty iron, etc.) had been thrown.
P. 57 (XX). The Marlburian, 28 July 1913.
Pp. 61, 62 (XXIII, XXIV), entitled in the author's manuscript "Two Songs from Ibsen's Dramatic Poems." They are not translations from Ibsen, but the author's own impressions of the dramatist's characters.
P. 66 (XXVII). This poem had its origin in the author's journey from the Officers' Training Camp at Churn in Berkshire to join his regiment at Shorncliffe on 18 September 1914, when he arrived at Paddington Station shortly before the special train left which took the Marlborough boys back to school for the term. The ​first draft of the poem was sent to a friend soon afterwards with the words, "Enclosed the poem which eventually came out of the first day of term at Paddington. Not much trace of the origin left; but I think it should get a prize for being the first poem written since August 4th that isn't patriotic." The draft differs in one place from the final form of the poem, and, instead of the present title, it is preceded by the verse, "And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise."
P. 68 (XXIX). Printed, after the author's death, in The Times Literary Supplement, 28 October 1915.
P. 71 (XXX). There is external evidence, though it is not quite conclusive, for dating this poem in August 1914.
P. 73 (XXXI). There is the same evidence for dating this poem also in August 1914.
P. 76 (XXXIII). A copy of the former of these two sonnets was sent to a friend with the title "Death—and the Downs." The title in the book is taken from the copy sent home by the author.
P. 78 (XXXIV). This sonnet was found in the author's kit sent home from France after his death.
P. 79 (XXXV). This poem was sent to a friend in July 1915. It appeared for the first time in the second edition.
P. 81 (XXXVI). The epistle in verse (fragments of which have been communicated to the editor and are printed here) was sent anonymously to J. B. (see note to VII). He discovered the authorship by sending the envelope of the letter to a Marlborough master, and replied in the beautiful verses which the editor is allowed to quote:
From far away there comes a Voice, Singing its song across the sea— A song to make man's heart rejoice— Of Marlborough and the Odyssey.
​A Voice that sings of Now and Then, Of minstrel joys and tiny towns, Of flowering thyme and fighting men, Of Sparta's sands and Marlborough's Downs.
God grant, dear Voice, one day again We see those Downs in April weather, And snuff the breeze and smell the rain, And stand in C House Porch together.
P. 82, line 11: κ.τ.λ. (kai ta loipa), et cetera. Line 13: ὰοιδὸς (aoidos), minstrel. P. 83, line 11: Ilsley, about twenty miles due east of Swindon and on the northern slope of the Berkshire downs. Line 23: the Ogbourne twins, Ogbourne St George and Ogbourne St Andrew, villages in the Valley of the Og, about five and three miles respectively north of Marlborough. Line 26: Aldbourne downs, on the eastern side of the Og and adjoining the Marlborough downs. P. 84, line 4: ἐρατεινή (erateinē), lovely. Line 11: Bedwyn, Great and Little Bedwyn, about a mile from the southeastern corner of Savernake forest and about six miles from Marlborough.
P. 85 (XXXVII). Printed, after the author's death, in The Marlburian, 24 November 1915. Sidney Clayton Woodroffe, killed in action at Hooge on 30 July 1915 and awarded a posthumous V.C., was a school contemporary of the author.
P. 86 (XXXVIII). This prose description is extracted from a letter home. The title has been supplied by the editor. P. 87, line 24: θαυμάσιον ὅσον, wonderfully great.
P. 111. The lines translated from Faust are almost the only example of verse translation by the author. Another specimen, which was found in a school notebook, is a rendering of Horace, Odes, I, 24. It is not likely that he would have printed it himself, but it is quoted here as an epilogue to these notes.
QUIS DESIDERIO
Check not thy tears, nor be ashamed to sorrow For one so dear. Sing us a plaintive song, O Muse, who from thy sire the lute didst borrow— The lute and notes melodious and strong.
So will he wake again from slumber never? O, when will Purity, to Justice dear, Faith unalloyed and Truth unspotted ever, When will these virtues ever find his peer?
For him the tears of noble men are flowing, But thine, O Virgil, bitterest of all! Thou prayest God to give him back, not knowing He may not, cannot hearken to thy call.
For if thy lyre could move the forests, swelling More sweetly than the Thracian bard's of old, His soul could not revisit its old dwelling; For now among the dead he is enrolled
By Mercury, all deaf to supplication, Obdurate, gathering all with ruthless rod. 'Tis hard; but Patience lightens Tribulation When to remove it is denied by God.
CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY J. B. PEACE, M.A., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS