Poem - George Sanders

Of Poets

By George Sanders

Sinai/Palestine Campaign 1916-17

If poets had to rise at dawn, and feed a blinking horse;

If poets had to eat our grub, plain bully beef, of course;

If poets rode beside us when the way was dry and long;

And liked it, let the Poets go and sing their blinking song.

But poets stay at home in ease, and travel not afar

To where the way is lighted by a pale, unwavering star.

They never scorch or swelter, at the desert never swear;

The reason why's not hard to find, they never have been their.

Now, when you hear a poet rave of 'Vast encircling sands,

Whose magnitude is circumscribed by cloudless azure bands

Of heaven's vault', his poesy's imagination grows;

Just think of all those scorching sands, and bash him on the nose.