Poems Beyond the Grave

They took their shovels and digging tools
To the top of Highgate Hill,
They walked in a deadly silence there
In the dusk, in the evening chill,
They picked their way through the deep-laid bones,
The monuments, great and small,
And looked for the plain Rossetti stone
In their search for Elizabeth Siddal.

That red-haired, wraithlike, ghostly girl
Who had charmed the PRB,
She'd sat, at first, for Deverell
Who was doomed, with Bright's Disease,
She'd fallen hard for the artist then
Though her love was never returned,
For Deverell died so suddenly -
It was as if her love was spurned.

She sat for Dante Gabriel,
For Holman Hunt, Millais,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Armada

A nursery governess stood and stared
At a hundred and fifty ships,
That lay in the Harbour at Lisbon where
They loaded each Galleass,
They bristled with brass and iron guns
With cannon and shot to spare,
And thousands of Spanish soldiers, heading
For England, do or dare!

A girl from a gentle Sussex home,
She thought of her father's fate,
A bluff, old-fashioned seafarer
Who had sailed with Francis Drake,
But this was surely the grandest fleet
That ever had put to sea,
Since Christ had walked on the water
On that lake, in Galilee.

She took up her parchment, dipped the quill
And wrote to a face unknown,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Underneath the Ice

I was down in the Antarctic
Taking soundings through the ice,
Working with a team of boffins,
Roger Cord and David Rice,
It was bleak out on the frozen scarp
I wore a heated suit,
And had thought to bring the oxygen,
They laughed - ‘The new recruit! '

They were tough as old shoe leather
Had been there since June the first,
And they scorned the winter weather,
Said ‘It's mild, will be soon be worse! '
So we took the caterpillar
Drove on out along the shelf,
There were signs of global warming,
I could see them for myself.

For the shelf had started parting
From the continent of ice,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Crab Island Light

The sea beats in at the headland spur
Then rounds Crab Island Reef,
The rip is a grey and swirling dearth
That will drag you underneath,
Then it hums and moans as it rounds the reef
And it howls in a winter storm,
'Til it beats up hard on the inland beach
Where the Light still stands, forlorn.

I kept that Light in my younger days
With my wife, sweet Mary Anne,
She swept and cleaned while I kept the glass
Of those mirrors spic and span,
I cleaned and polished them well by day
And tended the Light by night,
To warn seafarers of reef and rocks
With the beam of the Island Light.

But evenings, then, we'd lock the doors
And we'd climb up, out of reach

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Fire Man

It was shortly after the Second War,
The rubble lay in heaps,
The bombs no longer dropped,
But where they had was bombed for keeps!
The lads ran wild in the undergrowth
That had been a stately home,
And gangs laid claim to the sacred turf
That they liked to call their own.

The gang of Harriman Somers claimed
An isolated patch,
Complete with an air raid shelter with
A concrete roof to match,
From up there, high on the roof they spied
The whole of the country wide,
To warn of approaching rival gangs
They posted guards outside.

When Raymond Kirk came wandering
On home through the bridle track,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Terrorist

I lived in a block of service flats
Right next to a power grid,
The endless hum made my mind go numb
And infected all I did.
I couldn't sleep as the hum grew loud
At night, in the wind and rain,
Even the walls vibrated, and
They rattled the window-panes.

I pulled the pillow up over my head,
I tried sleeping upside down,
I rammed thick towels under the doors
Lay wide awake, and frowned.
I tried complaints to the Power Co.
Who laughed, and said, 'We'll see...
If anyone else complains, we might
Build a whole new facility! '

He grinned, and I took a poke at him
Right over the counter top,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Rain that Came to Stay

‘How much longer this drought, ' he said,
‘The creeks are running dry,
There's not a lot in the reservoir
And not a cloud in the sky,
The farmers, shooting the cattle that
Have nothing out there to drink,
How much longer this drought, ' he cried
In the pub at Innaminck!

The soil had turned to a fine bulldust,
The drought had cracked the clay,
There wasn't a green shoot anywhere
To be seen by the light of day,
The crops had failed, were ploughed back in
In hopes that the rain would come,
But the skies were clear for the rest of the year
From there to Jerusalem!

A tinker called in a beat-up car
And staggered in with his bag,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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S.o.s.

(They found her body right under the stairs
Where it had lain for twenty years,
The neck was broken, I heard folks say -
'Too late! ' was the verdict of Gallows Bay) .

* * * *

I'd heard dark things of Samuel Pell,
He drank too much and was far from well,
But he walked the beach in the early morn,
Especially after a gale, or storm.

He checked the flotsam as in it swirled
Into the bay from the seas of the world,
All the jetsam he'd pile up high,
And check each mark, with many a sigh.

But never a word did I hear him speak
From the crack of dawn to the end of the week,
And then he'd hurry on home once more

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Dunkirk

They came from a line of fishermen,
Way back, two hundred years,
The sons of a dour old Kentish man,
Who'd braved the First World War;
When Joe went off to the Army, then,
The old man's face was grim,
'You go and fight for the country, lad,
We can't rely on him! '

He scowled on down at the eldest lad
Who sat there, mending nets,
For all he knew was the salt, the sea
And a life of cheap regrets.
The black sheep of the family
Was all that his father saw,
For Jack had refused the Army call:
'I don't believe in war! '

A feather came in the post next day,
As white as a cotton sheet,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Cornishman

The train pulled away from the station,
The driver grinned up at the box,
The signalman glowered at the driver's face
As he slotted the lever across,
The train slid easily through the points
As it blew three whistle blasts,
One for the train, one for the box,
And one for Miss Caroline Glass.

Caroline waved him a cheery farewell
From the cottage she owned on the bank,
She'd once been engaged to the signalman,
But now she'd moved up a rank.
'A driver is such an important man, '
She'd said to her former beau,
'He holds all those lives in his hands when he drives,
And he crosses the country, so.'

'But you - you stand in this signal box,
Pull levers, and ring little bells,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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