Sunday, February 12, 2012

Philip Bainbrigge

Nevil Shute included this poem in his autobiographical memoir, Slide Rule, published in 1954; he called it 'one of the best war poems that I have ever heard' but said that he had never seen it in print anywhere.

The poet, Philip Bainbrigge, had been a sixth-form master at Shrewsbury School, where Shute was a pupil before he left to join the infantry in August 1918.

Shute describes Bainbrigge as a tall, delicate, weedy man who was as blind as a bat without his thick spectacles - the sort who should never have been sent into the army & posted to France at all, which he was at a late stage in the War when almost every male who could stand on his own two feet was being conscripted.

He was a popular young teacher with a great sense of humour & enormous academic ability. This sonnet was written in the trenches shortly before he died. The echo of Rupert Brooke is no doubt deliberate.

Martin Taylor included it in his collection Lads.

Sonnet

If I should die, be not concerned to know
The manner of my ending, if I fell
Leading a folorn charge against the foe,
Strangled by gas, or shattered by a shell.
Nor seek to see me in this death-in-life
Mid shirks and curse, oaths and blood and sweat,
Cold in the darkness, on the edge of strife,
Bored and afraid, irresolute, and wet
But if you think of me, remember one
Who loved good dinners, curious parody,
Swimming, and lying naked in the sun,
Latin hexameters, and heraldry,
Athenian subtleties of δηζ and ποιζ,
Beethoven, Botticelli, beer, and boys.

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