The Rise and Fall of Meter

142 chapter 4

At the sound of the drum,

Out of their dens they come, they come,

The little poets we hoped were dumb,

The little poets we thought were dead,

The poets who certainly haven’t been read 5

Since heaven knows when, they come, they come,

At the sound of the drum, of the drum, drum, drum.

At the sound of the drum,

O Tommy, they’ve all begun to strum,

With a horrible tumty, tumty, tum; 10

And it’s all about you, and the songs they sing

Are worse than the bullets’ villainous “ping,”

And they give you a pain in your tumty-tum,

At the sound of the drum, of the drum, drum, drum.

At the sound of the drum, 15

O Tommy, you know, if we haven’t all come

To stand by your side in the hideous hum,

It isn’t the horrors of war we fear,

The horrors of war we’ve got ‘em here,

When the poets come on like waves, and come

At the sound of the drum, of the drum, drum, drum.^84

This parody is both a play on “Drake’s Drum” and a commentary on the
way that military activity has provoked monotonous, militaristic meters. The
“horrors of war” are not on the battlefield, but in the poetry that attempts to
describe the battlefield, the poetry written for “Tommy” by poets who haven’t
been “read.” That the “little poets” have not been “read” refers both to the fact
that these so-called poets are not well read and also that they are only being
“read” or published because of the occasion of war. These poets, who “come on
like waves,” are so powerful that they dissuade the writer from standing by
Tommy’s side—it is not the “horrors of war” that the writer fears—indeed,
“hideous hum” and the chaotic collection of the bullets with their “villainous
ping,” are preferable to the endless, maddening repetition of the “drum, drum,
drum.” The actual battlefield is preferable to the battles over who has access to
writing English poetry, especially when poetry is reduced to a repetitive, jingo-
istic incantation in praise of the nation.
Thomas lamented that the “poetry boom” had been caused by men, “turned
into poets by the war, printing verse now for the first time,” who “pick up pop-
ular views or phrases . . . and turn them into downright stanzas.” He explained,
in the same 1914 review referenced above, that “These poems are not to be