Poems by the First World War Army Chaplain nicknamed 'Woodbine Willy' for his habit of handing out Woodbine cigarettes to the men in the trenches. WOODBINE WILLIE They gave me this name like their nature, Compacted of laughter and tears, A sweet that was born of the bitter, A joke that was torn from the years. Of their travail and torture, Christ's fools, Atoning my sins with their blood, Who grinned in their agony sharing The glorious madness of God. Their name! Let me hear it-the symbol Of unpaid-unpayable debt, For the men to whom I owed God's Peace, I put off with a cigarette. INDIFFERENCE When Jesus came to Golgotha they hanged Him on a tree, They drave great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary; They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red were His wounds and deep, For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap. When Jesus came to Birmingham they simply passed Him by, They never hurt a hair of Him, they only let Him die; For men had grown more tender, and they would not give Him pain, They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain. Still Jesus cried, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do," And still it rained the wintry rain that drenched Him through and through; The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see, And Jesus crouched against a wall and cried for Calvary.
The Unutterable Beauty
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Woodbine Willie's suffering God,
This review is from: The Unutterable Beauty: The Collected Poems of G A Studdert-Kennedy ('Woodbine Willie') (Paperback)
G.A. Studdert-Kennedy's collection of poems, "The Utterable Beauty,' has some verses in cockney dialect from his service as a WWI British chaplain (handing out "Woodbine" cigarettes to the doughboys), and most of them grow out of his wrestling with the suffering of war, insensitivity, and misfortune, but these verses rise in truth to the level of "The Unutterable Beauty." Probably the most widely known poem in the lot is "Indifference" ("When Jesus came to Birmingham") but the crown jewel is his poem, "The Suffering God."
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My hero,
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This review is from: The Unutterable Beauty: The Collected Poems of G A Studdert-Kennedy ('Woodbine Willie') (Paperback)
I was first shown Studdert-Kennedy's WWI poems in 1960, and bought my first copy that year. I have since owned several and given them away - a bit like Kennedy's own life, in which his wife would come home to the parsonage to discover that Studdert had given their bed to some poor family.
G A Studdert-Kennedy's poems (like his fiercely written devotional and exhortatory books) overflow with love and tenderness, passion and anger against injustice, hypocrisy and cant. He demolishes the sub-christian theology of triumphalism, and writes, "...and I hate the God of power on his hellish heavenly throne, looking down on rape and murder, hearing little children moan ... [a bit later:] God, the God I love and worship, reigns in sorrow on the tree; broken, bleeding, but unconquered, very God of God to me..." (from "High and Lifted Up". The poems, "Rough Rhymes of a Padre" was his own title for the first edition, reflect the man. He is no polished poet, but a passionate Christian minister who got his Woodbine Willie nickname (also the title of his biography by William Purcell) because instead of staying in the officers' mess with the other chaplains, he was down in the trenches handing out Woodbine cigarettes. After the war he became a pacifist, and fought that battle just as fiercely as all others, until his untimely death in (I think) 1929. I'm buying two copies of the book now, one to keep forever - it will be, as were others before it, one of my most treasured possessions - the other for the inevitable gift to someone who needs to hear the authentic voice of the God who suffers with us.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
something for a wide range of interests,
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This review is from: The Unutterable Beauty: The Collected Poems of G A Studdert-Kennedy ('Woodbine Willie') (Paperback)
There is something for everyone here from the much-loved Woodbine puffing chaplain - something for poetry lovers, war or military historians and/or Christians - they will find all something of interest in these pages. I found his haunting 'lyrics' unforgetable.
A lesser know war poet, but well recommended, who understood too well his men's feeling of God having deserted them to their trench hell. Faith finds it hard to adjust to horrors of war like this, but the feeling of being abandoned and crying out to God from the mire is honestly explored in this hauntingly beautiful poetry. Another war poet I liked is - The Ghosts of No Man's Land - The Rhymes of a Red Cross Man
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