The Shepherd
Annotations
(in italics)
Page 9
11th R.S.R i.e. 11th Royal Sussex Regiment, with which battalion I knew the Western Front, 1916- 1918.
Verse 1 beauty of contrast (English and Japanese) comparison (English and Japanese).
Verse 2 benefactor (?) (Japanese)
Verse 3 The Sussex soldiers were chiefly countrymen
Page 10
Verse 4 Before the great & desperate battle of Ypres, July 31, 1917
Verse 5 ‘Christ at each crossroad hung’ Great profusion of crucifixes seen in N.E. France
Page 11
The Shepherd
Verse1 ‘but he knows’ when he does not know
Verse 4 ‘His heart leaps up ……’ an unconscious reproduction of Wordsworth!
Page 13
Verse 7 ‘like wild eyes in a cave’ allusion to ‘Robinson Crusoe’
Page 14
Forefathers written at Oxford, summer 1923 (sic)
Verse 2 ‘ themselves were led Shoulder high’ By the coffin bearers: a country expression (to carry out ‘feet first’)
Page 16
The March Bee Written near Shelley’s birthplace, but not with his quill!
Page 17
Gleaning from experience in E. Anglia
Page 19
‘robin-flower’ pimpernel
Page 23
The Pasture Pond
Verse 15 ‘squirrel-carven pews’ Too short a cut; I meant pews on which were carvings of squirrels
November Morning at Congelow, in Kent – a celebrated old farm
Verse 1 ‘slats’ beats
Page 24
The Dried Millpond This also is close to Shelley’s birthplace and must have been known to him
.
Page 25
The May Day Garland contributed to a Labour journal’s special May-day issue. But what does modern Labour know of May?
Page 29
Verse 3 ‘losing’ in first ed., baffling
Page 30
Sheet Lightning Recollection of a cricket outing about 1906
Page 33
Cloudy June On the road to Abingdon: Oxford
Page 34
Mole Catcher objected to by J.M. Murry as being too true
Page 37
The Scythe Struck by Lightning The topic came, I think, from an old number of the Gentleman’s Magazine, which had many picturesque and vivid accounts of storms & phenomena
Page 40
The Giant Puffball commended by Sir E.Gosse
Page 43
Village Green at Cheveley, Cambridgeshire
Line 3 ‘earthy’ in first ed. ‘earthly’
Page 51
The Forest
Verse 7 1916.Battle of the Somme.
‘Aveluy Wood’ then just out of ordinary artillery range: afterwards not so
Behind the Line Liked by H.M. Tomlinson, a veteran well able to share the somewhat strange fascination of ‘sand-bagged rooms’ etc.
Page 55
Reunion in War imaginary, but spiritually truthful
Page 58
A Farm near Zillebeke In the Ypres Salient, March 1917. The ‘farm’ could not be approached by daylight
Festubert, 1916 where I first entered the trenches
Page 60
The Troubled Spirit post-war disillusion
Page 64
The Late Stand-to At dawn and at sunset the armies ‘stand to arms’, every man
Page 66
War Autobiography
Verse 1 ‘When the small golden god was gone’ a figure of Mercury, above a ruined house, which long escaped destruction
Page 67
Verse 3 ‘By the shrapnelled lock’ Cuinchy
Verse 4 ‘in Hamel valley’ R. Ancre, when we first knew it.
Page 68
Third Ypres The huge & hopeless battle of 1917
Page 70
‘Runner stand by a second’ By name, Wrackley
Page 72
‘Doctor, talk, talk’ He was afterwards killed in a similar occurrence, which I escaped by a few yards
‘There comes my serjeant’ W. Ashford, killed in 1918
‘the right battalion’ another Sussex battalion
Page 73
The Earth hath Bubbles quotn. From Macbeth
Page 74
Verse 3 Figures of the sphinx are seen carved on the pews in Denston Church, Suffolk –in the region connected with my verses.
Verse 4 ‘felt the whole house quake’ poltergeist
Death of Childhood Beliefs Remembrances of Yalding, Kent – an ancient village full of hops and cherries
Page 75
Verse 4 ‘And visions, as poetic eyes avow, Hangon each leaf, and swarm on every bough’
Page 76
The Canal At the same place. The metre altered from Campion’s ‘Rose-cheek’d Laura’.
Page 78
Verses 9 & 10 Several suicides by drowning occurred in this canal, or the similarly sullen Medway near it.
Page 79
The Time is Gone
Verse 1, last line Actually: a proud moment
Page 80
April Byeway
Verse 1 ‘there is not any grain to grind’ no carter brings him in
Verse 2 ‘dead friend’ John Clare
Page 82
Verse 6 ‘shudders’ is shaken
The Child’s Grave Kirtling, Suffolk
Page 83
Verse 6 & 7 ‘If common weeds were not to come, The graves would be without a bloom’ J. Clare unpublished lines.
Page 85
The Last of Autumn ‘in Abyssinia’ so R. Hodson in ‘Song of Honour’, but I did not realize it.
Page 86
Line 16 ‘lulls’ in first edition, ‘hills’
Line 18 ‘thus’ so, is correct