In Gweithdy Bach we'll rest awhile, We'll dress our wounds and learn to smile With easier lips; we'll stretch our legs, And live on bilberry tart and eggs, And store up solar energy, Basking in sunshine by the sea, Until we feel a match once more For _anything_ but another war.
So then we'll kiss our families, And sail across the seas (The God of Song protecting us) To the great hills of Caucasus. Robert will learn the local _bat_ For billeting and things like that, If Siegfried learns the piccolo To charm the people as we go.
The jolly peasants clad in furs Will greet the Welch-ski officers With open arms, and ere we pass Will make us vocal with Kavasse. In old Bagdad we'll call a halt At the Sâshuns' ancestral vault; We'll catch the Persian rose-flowers' scent, And understand what Omar meant. Bitlis and Mush will know our faces, Tiflis and Tomsk, and all such places. Perhaps eventually we'll get Among the Tartars of Thibet. Hobnobbing with the Chungs and Mings, And doing wild, tremendous things In free adventure, quest and fight, And God! what poetry we'll write!
To you who'd read my songs of War And only hear of blood and fame, I'll say (you've heard it said before) "War's Hell!" and if you doubt the same, Today I found in Mametz Wood A certain cure for lust of blood:
Where, propped against a shattered trunk, In a great mess of things unclean, Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk With clothes and face a sodden green, Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired, Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.
Here down this very way, Here only yesterday King Faun went leaping. He sang, with careless shout Hurling his name about; He sang, with oaken stock His steps from rock to rock In safety keeping, "Here Faun is free, Here Faun is free!"
Today against yon pine, Forlorn yet still divine, King Faun leant weeping. "They drank my holy brook, My strawberries they took, My private path they trod." Loud wept the desolate God, Scorn on scorn heaping, "Faun, what is he, Faun, what is he?"
My familiar ghost again Comes to see what he can see, Critic, son of Conscious Brain, Spying on our privacy.
Slam the window, bolt the door, Yet he'll enter in and stay; In tomorrow's book he'll score Indiscretions of today.