Mr. Level's Senior English Website



Translation of The Famous Greek War Song

Lord Byron (1837)

Sons of the Greeks, arise!

The glorious hour's gone forth,

And, worthy of such ties,

Display who gave us birth.

Chorus

Sons of Greeks! let us go

In arms against the foe,

Till their hated blood shall flow

In a river past our feet.

Then manfully despising

The Turkish tyrant's yoke,

Let your country see you rising,

And all her chains are broke.

Brave shades of chiefs and sages,

Behold the coming strife!

Hellenes of past ages,

Oh, start again to life!

At the sound of my trumpet, breaking

Your sleep, oh, loin with me!

And the seven-hill'd city seeking,

Fight, conquer, till we're free.

(Chorus)

Sparta, Sparta, why in slumbers

Lethargic doth thou lie?

Awake, and join thy numbers

With Athens, old ally!

Leonidas recalling,

That chief of ancient song,

Who saved ye once from falling,

The terrible! the strong!

Who made that bold diversion

In old Thermopylæ

And warring with the Persian

To keep his country free;

With his three hundred waging

The battle, long he stood,

And like a lion raging,

Expired in seas of blood.

(Chorus)

The Hurt Locker

Brian Turner (2005)

Nothing but hurt left here.

Nothing but bullets and pain

and the bled-out slumping

and all the fucks and goddamns

and Jesus Christs of the wounded.

Nothing left here but the hurt.

 

Believe it when you see it.

Believe it when a twelve-year-old

rolls a grenade into the room.

Or when a sniper punches a hole

deep into someone’s skull.

Believe it when four men

step from a taxicab in Mosul

to shower the street in brass

and fire. Open the hurt locker

and see what there is of knives

and teeth. Open the hurt locker and learn

how rough men come hunting for souls.

Nefarious War

Li-Po ( 750 A.D.)

Last year we fought by the head-stream of the Sang-kan,

This year we are fighting on the Tsung-ho road.

We have washed our armor in the waves of the Chiao-chi lake,

We have pastured our horses on Tien-shan's snowy slopes.

The long, long war goes on ten thousand miles from home,

Our three armies are worn and grown old.

The barbarian does man-slaughter for plowing;

On this yellow sand-plains nothing has been seen but

blanched skulls and bones.

Where the Chin emperor built the walls against the Tartars,

There the defenders of Han are burning beacon fires.

The beacon fires burn and never go out,

There is no end to war!—

In the battlefield men grapple each other and die;

The horses of the vanquished utter lamentable cries to heaven,

While ravens and kites peck at human entrails,

Carry them up in their flight, and hang them on the branches of dead trees.

So, men are scattered and smeared over the desert grass,

And the generals have accomplished nothing.

Oh, nefarious war! I see why arms

Were so seldom used by the benign sovereigns. 

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Lord Tennyson (1854)

I

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!” he said.

Into the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred.

II

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”

Was there a man dismayed?

Not though the soldier knew

   Someone had blundered.

   Theirs not to make reply,

   Theirs not to reason why,

   Theirs but to do and die.

   Into the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred.

III

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

   Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of hell

   Rode the six hundred.

IV

Flashed all their sabres bare,

Flashed as they turned in air

Sabring the gunners there,

Charging an army, while

   All the world wondered.

Plunged in the battery-smoke

Right through the line they broke;

Cossack and Russian

Reeled from the sabre stroke

   Shattered and sundered.

Then they rode back, but not

   Not the six hundred.

V

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon behind them

   Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

While horse and hero fell.

They that had fought so well

Came through the jaws of Death,

Back from the mouth of hell,

All that was left of them,

   Left of six hundred.

VI

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

   All the world wondered.

Honour the charge they made!

Honour the Light Brigade,

   Noble six hundred!

DULCE ET DECORUM EST1

Wilfred Owen (1915)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, 

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, 

Till on the haunting flares2 we turned our backs 

And towards our distant rest3 began to trudge. 

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots 

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; 

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots4 

Of tired, outstripped5 Five-Nines6 that dropped behind.

Gas!7 Gas! Quick, boys! –  An ecstasy of fumbling, 

Fitting the clumsy helmets8 just in time; 

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, 

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime9 . . . 

Dim, through the misty panes10 and thick green light, 

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, 

He plunges at me, guttering,11 choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace 

Behind the wagon that we flung him in, 

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, 

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; 

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood 

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, 

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud12 

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, 

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest13 

To children ardent14 for some desperate glory, 

The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est 

Pro patria mori.

1 DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honor to fight and die for your country 

2 rockets which were sent up to burn with a brilliant glare to light up men and other targets in the area between the front lines (See illustration, page 118 of Out in the Dark.) 

3 a camp away from the front line where exhausted soldiers might rest for a few days, or longer 

4 the noise made by the shells rushing through the air 

5 outpaced, the soldiers have struggled beyond the reach of these shells which are now falling behind them as they struggle away from the scene of battle

6 Five-Nines - 5.9 caliber explosive shells 

7 poison gas. From the symptoms it would appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The filling of the lungs with fluid had the same effects as when a person drowned

8 the early name for gas masks 

9 a white chalky substance which can burn live tissue 

10 the glass in the eyepieces of the gas masks 

11 Owen probably meant flickering out like a candle or gurgling like water draining down a gutter, referring to the sounds in the throat of the choking man, or it might be a sound partly like stuttering and partly like gurgling 

12 normally the regurgitated grass that cows chew; here a similar looking material was issuing from the soldier's mouth 

13 high zest - idealistic enthusiasm, keenly believing in the rightness of the idea 

14 keen; eager; passionate 

The Man He Killed

Thomas Hardy (1902)

"Had he and I but met 

            By some old ancient inn, 

We should have sat us down to wet 

            Right many a nipperkin! 

            "But ranged as infantry, 

            And staring face to face, 

I shot at him as he at me, 

            And killed him in his place. 

            "I shot him dead because — 

            Because he was my foe, 

Just so: my foe of course he was; 

            That's clear enough; although 

            "He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, 

            Off-hand like — just as I — 

Was out of work — had sold his traps — 

            No other reason why. 

            "Yes; quaint and curious war is! 

            You shoot a fellow down 

You'd treat if met where any bar is, 

            Or help to half-a-crown." 

Battle Hymn of the Republic

Julia Ward Howe (1861)

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage where grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,

His truth is marching on.

CHORUS:

Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps;

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,

His day is marching on.

CHORUS

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His Judgement Seat.

Oh! Be swift, my soul, to answer Him, be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on.

CHORUS

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;

As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.

CHORUS

Norman Morrison

Adrian Mitchell

On November 2nd 1965

in the multi-colored multi-minded

United beautiful States of terrible America

Norman Morrison set himself on fire

outside the Pentagon.

He was thirty-one, he was a Quaker,

and his wife (seen weeping in the newsreels)

and his three children

survive him as best they can.

He did it in Washington where everyone could see

because

people were being set on fire

in the dark corners of Vietnam where nobody could see

Their names, ages, beliefs and loves

are not recorded.

This is what Norman Morrison did.

He poured petrol over himself.

He burned. He suffered.

He died.

That is what he did

in the white heart of Washington

where everyone could see.

He simply burned away his clothes,

his passport, his pink-tinted skin,

put on a new skin of flame

and became

Vietnamese.

Lance Corporal Henry Hart, U.S.M.C.

Bryan Alec Floyd (1976)

Perhaps the guilt of war can be explained by all people,

But perhaps the meaning of the guilt only by their poets.

Had he made it through the war

he wanted to find words

and the good way with words

that he might write

in lovely, lasting words

what war had done to them.

Corporal Curt Meadows, U.S.M.C.

Bryan Alec Floyd (1976)

In the warp of military time,

his father got his son’s last letter

after he had received

official word of his son’s death.

His son’s letter read:

“And there will be old memories

made alive and young

of the dying and the dead

the living have no right to forget.”

Private Ian Godwin, U.S.M.C.

Bryan Alec Floyd (1976)

He stepped on a land mine,

falling up instead of down.

Afterward he lay still, listening

to his feet get up without him

and slowly walk away.

For this he was given a medal,

which he swallowed.

He was given crutches,

which he burned.

Flown Med-Evac to San Diego,

he was ordered to rehabilitate.

But he started to salute bedpans

and give orders to hypos,

and tell catheters to “Fire!”

He stood on his stumps,

yelling that he was going

to chase daisies up the hills

because winter had greened into spring,

that God had become rain and it was raining,

the soft mud of Vietnam cool between his toes.

Corporal Victor Vanderbilt, U.S.M.C.

Bryan Alec Floyd (1976)

After the Marines liberated Hue

they dug up the bodies

the Viet Cong left behind,

and three thousand corpses who, when alive,

refused or were unable to rise

to even higher and higher levels

of political consciousness,

and so were beaten and hacked and shot

to death after death after death,

liberated by their own.

The Marines thought

they had seen everything,

but nothing had ever been like this.

He went to a couple

who were on their knees, the tiny remains

of their year-old child before them.

Their baby had not lived long enough

to hate the world

or to blame life its living death called war.

Its mother was silent

beyond all silence;

its father dead beyond all death.

Yet she spoke, sobbing.

Yet he breathed, wailing.

Their child had left them

listening to the song of shrapnel

when a bullet pierced its ears and brain.

It was so young

it had looked at everything,

understanding nothing.

Except its mother.

Except its father.

They were alive

and they were dead.

Sergeant Brandon Just, U.S.M.C.

Bryan Alec Floyd (1976)

He was alive with death:

Her name was Sung

and she was six year sold.

By slightest mistake of degrees

on an artillery azimuth,

he had called for rockets and napalm.

Their wild wizardry of firepower

expired her mistake of a village,

killing everyone except her,

and napalm made her look

like she was dead among the dead,

she alone alive among their upturned corpses

burning toward the sky.

He and the platoon

got to them too late,

removing only her

to a hospital inside his base, Da Nang.

In the months that followed,

when he could make it back from the boonies,

he always went to visit Sung.

Finally he was ordered to a desk job at the base.

He visited her every day,

though he accused himself of being alive

and would stand in a slump,

breathing his despair,

before entering the children’s ward.

But he would enter.

Sung, knowing it was him,

would turn toward the sound of his feet,

her own, seared beyond being feet,

crisply trying to stand on shadows,

cool but unseen.

And as he would come in,

Sung would hobble up to him

in her therapeutic cart,

smiling even when she did not smile, lipless,

her chin melted to her chest

that would never become breasts.

He would stand

and wait for her to touch upon his hand

with her burn-splayed fingers

that came to lay a fire upon his flesh.

Sung was alive

and would live on despite life,

but even now her skull

seemed to be working its way through

the thin, fragile solids of wasted, waxen skin.

Her head was as bald as a bomb

whose paint had peeled.

She had no nose

and her ears were gone.

Her eyes had been removed,

and because they were not there,

they were

invisibly looking him through.

Sung was child-happy

that he came and cared,

and when he would start to leave,

she would agonize her words

out of the hollow that was her mouth.

Her tongue, bitten in two while she had burned,

strafing his ears,

saying, without mercy,

I love you.

Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley

By C Company Featuring Terry Nelson (1998)

Once upon a time there was a

Little boy who wanted to grow up

And be a soldier and serve his country

In whatever way he could

He would parade around the house

With a sauce pan on

His head for a helmet

A wooden sword in one hand

And the American flag in the other

As he grew up

He put away the things of a child

But he never let go of the flag

My name is William Calley

I'm a soldier of this land

I've tried to do my duty

And to gain the upper hand

But they've made me out a villain

They have stamped me with a brand

As we go marching on

I'm just another soldier

From the shores of U. S. A.

Forgotten on a battle field

Ten thousand miles away

While life goes on as usual

From New York to Santa Fe

As we go marching on

I've seen my buddies ambushed

On the left and on the right

And their youthful bodies riddled

By the bullets of the night

Where all the rules are broken

And the only law is might

As we go marching on

While we're fighting in the jungles

They were marching in the street

While we're dying in the rice fields

They were helping our defeat

While we're facing V. C. bullets

They were sounding a retreat

As we go marching on

With our sweat, we took the bunkers

With our tears, we took the plain

With our blood, we took the mountains

And they gave it back again

Still all of us are soldiers

We're too busy to complain

As we go marching on

When I reach my final campground

In that land beyond the sun

And the great commander asks me

Did you fight or did you run

I'll stand both straight and tall

Stripped of medals, rank and gun

And this is what I'll say

Sir, I followed all my orders

And I did the best I could

It's hard to judge the enemy

And hard to tell the good

Yet there's not a man among us

Would not have understood

We took the jungle village

Exactly like they said

We responded to their rifle fire

With everything we had

And when the smoke had cleared away

A hundred souls lay dead

Sir, the soldier that's alive

Is the only one can fight

There's no other way to wage a war

When the only one in sight

That you're sure is not a V. C.

Is your buddy on your right

When all the wars are over

And the battle's finally won

Count me only as a soldier

Who never left his gun

With the right to serve my country

As the only prize I've won

Glory, glory, hallelujah

Glory, glory, hallelujah

Born in the USA

Bruce Springsteen (1984)

Born down in a dead man's town

The first kick I took was when I hit the ground

You end up like a dog that's been beat too much

Till you spend half your life just covering up, now

Chorus:

Born in the U.S.A.

I was born in the U.S.A.

I was born in the U.S.A.

Born in the U.S.A., now

Got in a little hometown jam

So they put a rifle in my hand

Sent me off to a foreign land

To go and kill the yellow man

(Chorus)

Come back home to the refinery

Hiring man says, "Son if it was up to me."

Went down to see my V.A. man

He said, "Son, don't you understand, now."

I had a brother at Khe Sahn fighting off the Viet Cong

They're still there, he's all gone

He had a woman he loved in Saigon

I got a picture of him in her arms now

Down in the shadow of the penitentiary

Out by the gas fires of the refinery

I'm ten years burning down the road

Nowhere to run ain't got nowhere to go

(Chorus)

Corporal Charles Chungtu, U.S.M.C.

Bryan Alec Floyd (1976)

This is what the war ended up being about:

we would find a V.C. village,

and if we could not capture it or clear it of Cong,

we called for jets.

The jets would come in, low and terrible,

sweeping down, and screaming,

in their first pass over the village.

Then they would return, dropping their first bombs

that flattened the huts to rubble and debris.

And then the jets would sweep back again

and drop more bombs

that blew the rubble and debris

to dust and ashes.

And then the jets would come back once again,

in a last pass, this time to drop napalm

that burned the dust and ashes to just nothing.

Then the village

that was not a village anymore

was our village.

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