'On Satan’s Chamberlains Highseated in Berlin'

In 2011, in an antiques-cum-junk shop here in Houston, I found a copy of an anthology, The Spirit of Man, published as a wartime morale booster in 1916, edited by the Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges. It’s the fourth edition, from 1923. I knew the title because of the contribution by Henry James, who had become a British citizen in 1915. I’ve been reading a history of the Great War and the post-war period in Europe, which suggests that World War II was merely a continuation of the first conflict – driven largely by Germany -- which reminded me of something Bridges writes in his preface: 

“In the darkness and stress of the storm the signs of the time cannot all be distinctly seen, nor can we read them dispassionately; but two things stand out clearly, and they are above question or debate. The first is that Prussia’s scheme for the destruction of her neighbours was long laid, and scientifically elaborated to the smallest detail; the second is that she will shrink from no crime that may further its execution.”

 

The causes of German aggression were many, including anti-Semitism, rabid nationalism, resentment and humiliation over losing the first war and the reparations imposed by the Allies. Hitler had a ripe audience. Bridges describes “the apostasy of a great people,” meaning the Germans. In 1920, he published October and Other Poems: With Occasional Verses on the War. Most of its contents were written during the war. Here is "Our Prisoners of War in Germany,” subtitled October, 1918 – in others words, the month before the Armistice:

 

“Prisoners to a foe inhuman, Oh! but our hearts rebel:

Defenceless victims ye are, in claws of spite a prey,

Conquering your torturers, enduring night and day

Malice, year-long drawn out your noble spirits to quell.

Fearsomer than death this rack they ranged, and reckon’d well

’Twould harrow our homes, and plied, such devilish aim had they,

That England roused to rage should wrong with wrong repay,

And smirch her envied honour in deeds unspeakable.

Nor trouble we just Heaven that quick revenge be done

On Satan’s chamberlains highseated in Berlin;

Their reek floats round the world on all lands ’neath the sun:

Tho’ in craven Germany was no man found, not one

With spirit enough to cry Shame!—Nay, but on such sin

Follows Perdition eternal . . . and it has begun.”

 

I sense Bridges is nearly forgotten, even among devoted readers. He published much dross – hardly unusual among Poet Laureates -- and is not among the great poets of World War I. At his best, he could be sublime. Consider “Low Barometer,” judged by Yvor Winters among the finest poems in the language. Bridges was born on this date, October 23, in 1844 and died in 1930 at age eighty-five.