What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
The following interview with William Graves, Robert Graves‘ son, was conducted by the BBC as part of its commemoration of WW1.
It provides an intimate and touching portrait of Robert Graves in his later years, and makes very clear how the experiences he underwent as a young soldier, acutely examined in Goodbye to All That, haunted him all his life.
William Graves is himself a distinguished writer – his memoir, Wild Olives, about his childhood years in Deia with his father, is a classic of the genre.
Move him into the sun –
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds, –
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved – still warm – too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
– O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?
The snow fell, and its power was multiplied.
For the first time the Eagle bowed its head–
dark days! Slowly the Emperor returned–
behind him Moscow! Its onion domes still burned.
The snow rained down in blizzards–rained and froze.
Past each white waste a further white waste rose.
None recognized the captains or the flags.
Yesterday the Grand Army, today its dregs!
No one could tell the vanguard from the flanks.
The snow! The hurt men struggled from the ranks,
hid in the bellies of dead horses, in stacks
of shattered caissons.By the bivouacs,
one saw the picket dying at his post,
still standing in his saddle,
white with frost,
the stone lips frozen to the bugle’s mouth!
Bullets and grapeshot mingled with the snow,
that hailed…The guard, surprised at shivering, march
in a dream now; ice rimes the gray mustache.
The snow falls, always snow! The driving mire
submerges; men, trapped in that white empire,
have no more bread and march on barefoot–gaps!
They were no longer living men and troops,
but a dream drifting in a fog, a mystery,
mourners parading under the black sky.
The solitude, vast, terrible to the eye,
was like a mute avenger everywhere,
as snowfall, floating through the quiet air,
buried the huge army in a huge shroud.
Could anyone leave this kingdom? A crowd–
each man, obsessed with dying, was alone.
Men slept–and died! The beaten mob sludged on,
ditching the guns to burn their carriages.
Two foes. The North, the Czar. The North was worse.
In hollows where the snow was piling up,
one saw whole regiments fallen asleep.
Attila‘s dawn, Cannaes of Hannibal!
The army marching to its funeral!
Litters, wounded, the dead, deserters–swarms,
crushing the bridges down to cross a stream.
They went to sleep ten thousand, woke up four
Ney , bringing up the former army’s rear,
hacked his horse loose from three disputing Cossacks…
All night, the qui vive? The alert! Attacks;
retreats! White ghosts would wrench away our guns,
or we would see dim, terrible squadrons,
circles of steel, whirlpools of savages,
rush sabering through the camp like dervishes.
And in this way, whole armies died at night.
The Emperor was there, standing–he saw.
This oak already trembling from the ax,
watched his glories drop from him branch by branch:
chiefs, soldiers. Each one had his turn and chance–
they died! Some lived. These still believed his star
and kept their watch. They loved the man of war
this small man with his hands behind his back,
whose shadow, moving to and fro, was black
behind the lighted tent. Still believing, they
accused their destiny of lese-majeste.
His misfortune had mounted on their back.
The man of glory shook. Cold stupefied
him, then suddenly he felt terrified.
Being without belief, he turned to God:
“God of armies, is this the end?” he cried.
And then at last the expiation came,
as he heard someone call him by his name,
someone half-lost in shadow, who said, “No,
Napoleon.” Napoleon understood
before his butchered legions in the snow.
Out of a fired ship, which by no way
But drowning could be rescued from the flame,
Some men leap’d forth, and ever as they came
Near the foes’ ships, did by their shot decay;
So all were lost, which in the ship were found,
They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt ship drown’d.
In this week leading up to the 4th August, the centenary of the beginning of WW1, I am posting a series of poems in tribute to the fallen of other centuries and other countries.
This poem was written by Rihaku in the 8th century. It is translated by Ezra Pound.
Lament of the Frontier Guard
By the North Gate, the wind blows full of sand,
Lonely from the beginning of time until now!
Trees rail, the grass goes yellow with autumn.
I climb the towers and towers
to watch out the barbarous land:
Desolate castle, the sky, the wide desert.
There is no wall left to this village.
Bones white with a thousand frosts,
High heaps, covered with trees and grass;
Who brought this to pass?
Who has brought the flaming imperial anger?
Who has brought the army with drums and with kettle-drums?
Barbarous kings.
A gracious spring, turned to blood-ravenous autumn,
A turmoil of wars-men, spread over the middle kingdom,
Three hundred and sixty thousand,
And sorrow, sorrow like rain.
Sorrow to go, and sorrow, sorrow returning.
Desolate, desolate fields,
And no children of warfare upon them,
No longer the men for offence and defence.
Ah, how shall you know the dreary sorrow at the North Gate,
With Rihaku’s name forgotten,
And we guardsmen fed to the tigers.
Owls, in the poems we have chosen for this oratorio, are creatures of the night; allied, as in Robert Graves’ Outlaws,
to
...the old gods, shrunk to shadows, there In the wet woods they lurk, Greedy of human stuff to snare In webs of murk.
Robert Graves, who was to become, in his later years, an expert authority on mythology, was tapping into a long history of disquiet about owls. Their piercing eyes, silent dark flight and eerie calls have associated them with that shadowy hinterland between the dead and the living in many cultures. We fear the dark and those things that might dwell there.
In general, the hooting of an Owl is considered a portent of bad luck, often death, although, conversely, in ancient Greece, owls were often seen as a symbol of good fortune, and are, of course, associated with the Greek goddess of wisdom, Athena, whose owl revealed hidden truths to her. But, even here, the owl is revealing occult truths, veiled from the daylight knowledge of humans.
The Romans, however, saw owls as omens of impending disaster; often of imminent death. Julius Caesar, Augustus & Agrippa were all warned of their deaths by the screech of owls.
The Ainu in Japan trust the Owl because it gives them notice of evil approaching. They revere the Owl, and believe it mediates between the Gods and men.
Ai- Apaec
To the Welsh, the Owl is a night predator , symbolizing death and renewal, wisdom, moon magic, and initiations. Their Goddess Arianrhod , the White Goddess herself, shapeshifts into a large Owl, and through the great Owl-eyes, sees even into the darkness of the human subconscious and soul.
She is said to move with strength and purpose through the night, her wings of comfort and healing spread to give solace to those who seek her.
We return to owls, which inspired one of the most haunting of musical cadences in the Oratorio, in Night March where they are, like banshees, prophesying death and horror to come…
Silence, disquiet: from those trees Far off a spirit of evil howls. ‘Down to the Somme’ wail the banshees With the long mournful voice of owls.
The spell cast by these magnificent and mysterious creatures, flying silently out of the darkness to bring us hidden truths we would rather not hear, is beautifully caught by Randall Jarrell in his poem The Bird of Night:
Bats do have their relaxed moments, when they are just hanging; doing their own thing..
But we are afraid of them. We always have been.
My one and only close encounter with a bat took place in South Africa. One hot summer night I slid into the back seat of my parent’s car, the windows of which had been left open to keep it cool , and felt something soft, furry and warm move onto my sandeled foot. In the darkness I couldn’t see what it was. My father shone a torch onto it and all we could see was a round dark furry shape. I froze in terror; we had an open thatch house which regularly provided us with unexpected tarantulas. Eventually my parents persuaded me to move; I gingerly put my foot out of the car onto the path; whatever it was clung to me fondly. In the moonlight we saw it was a small bat ( it would have been a very large spider!) which we eventually persuaded to cling to a tree instead. But while it was still breathing on my foot, even when I knew it was a harmless bat, and not a spider, I was still terrified; I just wanted it off..
Perhaps it’s because of the company we think they keep..
Bats have always been associated with the Netherworld
(Following quotes are taken from an article by Professor Gary F. McCracken; there is a link to the full piece above.)
One common folk belief is that bats are human souls that have left the body. Contemporary Finnish folklore relates that during sleep, the soul leaves the body and may appear as a bat. Such lore also explains the disappearance of bats during the day, since when humans awake, their souls return home to their bodies.
When seen as human souls, bats are often imagined as souls of the dead, particularly souls of the damned, or those that are not yet at peace. Both African-Americans and those of European descent from around the United States frequently maintain that bats are “ghosts” or “haunts.” Sicilian peasants relate that the souls of persons who meet a violent death must spend a period of time, determined by God, as either a bat, lizard, or other reptile. In the Auguries of Innocence, William Blake saw the bat as the damned soul of the infidel:
The bat that flits at close of eve Has left the brain that won’t believe.
An even earlier example of Western tradition associating bats with souls of the damned is provided by Homer when Hermes conducts squeaking, bat-like souls to Hades (The Odyssey, XXIV, 5-10). In Greek mythology, the bat was said to be sacred to Proserpina, the wife of Pluto, ruler of the underworld.
There is also long tradition associating bats directly with the devil and evil spirits. In medieval Europe, artists typically represented devils with bat-like wings and pointed ears. Gustave Doré’s illustrations for Dante’s Inferno followed the tradition of portraying good spirits with the wings of birds and evil spirits with the wings of bats.
Similarly, the Mayas of Central America had a bat God, Cama-Zotz (or “death bat”), depicted as a man with bat wings and a bat-like leaf nose, who lived in a region of darkness through which a dying man had to pass on his way to the netherworld.
American equivalent of the Ahool, in Mythology known as Camazotz.
The association of bats with the devil continues today in many cultures. An African-American folk legend relates that the devil may appear as a bat.
The association of bats with death, hell and the devil, established long before Meatloaf, might seem to have affected the way they were named…
The species name of the common North American little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus), might connote an association with Lucifer, the fallen Archangel. That was not, however, the intent of “lucifugus,” which has the less forbidding translation of “light fleeing.” (It is interesting to note that “lucifer” means “light bringing,” and that prior to his fall from grace, Lucifer was the most beautiful of the Archangels.) Then there is the Neotropical fruit bat, Vampyrops helleri. Despite appearances, this bat was not named for the abode of the damned, but in tribute to Florian Heller, a biologist.
Although folklore persists, most people know that bats are not disembodied spirits or the devil’s friends, confidants, or alter egos. Increasingly, people are coming to know that bats are one of the most diverse, interesting, and ecologically important groups of mammals. The myriad of physical, ecological, and behavioral features that make bats so prominent in folklore are the products of natural selection, demonstrating once again that the natural often surpasses the supernatural.
Robert Graves, in Outlaws, on of the poems we feature in The Cool Web, gives bats a walk-on part as far as foreboding goes – his main harbinger of evil is the owl; of which more in a later blog..
https://robertgravesoratorio.co.uk/The General
‘Good-morning; good-morning!’ the General said When we met him last week on our way to the line. Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead, And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine. ‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
But he did for them both by his plan of attack.
And in 2014? Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH
.jpg)
Similarly, the Mayas of Central America had a bat God, 
