High Hill Press Review
Fiction, Essays, Poetry
Read an essay by, Nick Cash, a young writer and poet in the St. Louis area. This editor loves to feature writers just starting their careers. Think of the people who met Robert Frost when he was only eighteen. How they must have felt later when he became one of the most beloved writers in America. Nick Cash
Each week or so we'll feature a classic poem here. If you'd like to see your favorite on this page, write and let us know. This poem, Anthem for Doomed Youth is so timely that the editors of HHPR had to publish it as their first choice. It's heart wrenching and chest throbbing...which is what poetry is supposed to be. Let us know what you think.
Anthem For Doomed Youth
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 good-byes.
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.
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Make
