WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
The Judgement of Valhalla cover

The Judgement of Valhalla

Chapter 14: NINON AND ROSES
By Gilbert Frankau
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

History - WarfarePoetry

About This Book

The collection opens with the execution of a condemned soldier and follows his spirit as it seeks admittance to a mythic hall of warriors, where a disembodied Eye and Truth judge the dead. Through a series of grave songs the voices of infantrymen, aviators, and gunners recount frontline violence, comradeship, technique, and sacrifice, and their celebration of martial courage contrasts with the deserter's shame. The tribunal denies entry, framing communal notions of honour, judgment, and exclusion in the aftermath of battlefield killing.

NINON AND ROSES

Here, in a land where hardly a rose is,

Silkiest blossoms of broidered flowers

Brush my cheek as each tired eye closes,

Haunt my sleep through the desolate hours.

Roses never of nature’s making,

Roses loved for a rose-red night,

Roses visioned at dawn-light’s breaking

Veiling a bosom as roses white!

Why does the ghost of you linger and stay with me—

Ghost of the rose-buds that perfumed our bed,

Ghost of a rose-girl who blossomed to play with me—

Here in a land where the roses are dead?

Day-time and night-time the death-flower blazes,

Saffron at gun-lip and orange and red,

Here where June’s rose-tree lies shattered as May’s is,

Here where I dream of the nights that are dead—

Nights that were sweet with the scent and the touch of you,

Rose-girl in ninon with buds at your breast,

Rose-girl who promised and granted so much of you,

All that was tender and all that was best.

Growl of the guns cannot shatter the dream of you,

Banish the thought of one exquisite hour,

Or the scent of your hair in the dawn, or the gleam of you

White as white roses through roses a-flower.