64501: Familiar Letter To Siegfried Sassoon
Creators: name: Project Team, First World War Poetry Digital Archive
Publisher: name: University of Oxford
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 430304
subject: British history
classificationCode: 430308
subject: European history (excl. British, classical Greek and Roman)
classificationCode: 430316
subject: International history

description: (From Bivouacs at Mametz Wood, July 13th, 1916)<br>I never dreamed we'd meet that day<br>In our old haunts down Fricourt way,<br>Plotting such marvellous journeys there<br>For golden-houred 'Aprs-la-guerre.'<br>Well, when it's over, first we'll meet<br>At Gweithdy Bach, my country seat<br>In Wales, a curious little shop<br>With two rooms and a roof on top,<br>A sort of Morlancourt-ish billet<br>That never needs a crowd to fill it.<br>But oh, the country round about!<br>The sort of view that makes you shout<br>For want of any better way<br>Of praising God: there's a blue bay<br>Shining in front, and on the right<br>Snowdon and Hebog capped with white,<br>And lots of other mountain peaks<br>That you could wonder at for weeks,<br>With jag and spur and hump and cleft.<br>There's a grey castle on the left,<br>And back in the high hinterland<br>You'll see the grave of Shawn Knarlbrand<br>Who slew the savage Buffaloon<br>By the Nant-col one night in June,<br>And won his surname from the horn<br>Of this prodigious unicorn.<br>Beyond, where the two Rhinogs tower,<br>Rhinog Fach and Rhinog Fawr,<br>Close there after a four years' chase<br>From Thessaly and the woods of Thrace,<br>The beaten Dog-cat stood at bay<br>And growled and fought and passed away.<br>You'll see where mountain conies grapple<br>With prayer and creed in their rock chapel<br>Which three young children once built for them;<br>They call it Šar Bethlehem.<br>You'll see where in old Roman days,<br>Before Revivals changed our ways,<br>The Virgin 'scaped the Devil's grab,<br>Printing her foot on a stone slab<br>With five clear toe-marks; and you'll find<br>The fiendish thumb-print close behind.<br>You'll see where Math, Mathonwy's son,<br>Spoke with the wizard Gwydion<br>And bade him for South Wales set out<br>To steal that creature with the snout,<br>That new-discovered grunting beast<br>Divinely flavoured for the feast.<br>No traveller yet has hit upon<br>A wilder land than Meirion,<br>For desolate hills and tumbling stones,<br>Bogland and melody and old bones.<br>Fairies and ghosts are here galore,<br>And poetry most splendid, more<br>Than can be written with the pen<br>Or understood by common men.<br>In Gweithdy Bach we'll rest a while,<br>We'll dress our wounds and learn to smile<br>With easier lips; we'll stretch our legs,<br>And live on bilberry tart and eggs,<br>And store up solar energy,<br>Basking in sunshine by the sea,<br>Until we feel a match once more<br>For anything but another war.<br>So then we'll kiss our families,<br>And sail away across the seas<br>(The God of Song protecting us)<br>To the great hills of Caucasus.<br>Robert will learn the local bat<br>For billeting and things like that,<br>If Siegfried learns the piccolo<br> To charm the people as we go.<br>The simple peasants clad in furs<br>Will greet the foreign officers<br>With open arms, and ere they pass<br>Will make them tuneful with Kavasse.<br>In old Bagdad we'll call a halt<br>At the Sashuns' ancestral vault;<br>We'll catch the Persian rose-flowers' scent,<br>And understand what Omar meant.<br>Bitlis and Mush will know our faces,<br>Tiflis and Tomsk, and all such places.<br>Perhaps eventually we'll get<br>Among the Tartars of Thibet,<br>Hobnobbing with the Chungs and Mings,<br>And doing wild, tremendous things<br>In free adventure, quest and fight,<br>And God! what poetry we'll write!