Explore "SOSPAN FACH. (The Little Saucepan)" by Robert Graves on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Four collier lads from Ebbw Vale
Took shelter from a shower of hail,
And there beneath a spreading tree / Attuned their mouths to harmony.
With smiling joy on every face / Two warbled tenor, two sang bass, / And while the leaves above them hissed with / Rough hail, they started "Aberystwyth."
Old Parry's hymn, triumphant, rich, / They changed through with even pitch, / Till at the end of their grand noise / I called: "Give us the 'Sospan' boys!"
Who knows a tune so soft, so strong, / So pitiful as that "Saucepan" song / For exiled hope, despaired desire / Of lost souls for their cottage fire?
Then low at first with gathering sound / Rose their four voices, smooth and round, / Till back went Time: once more I stood / With Fusiliers in Mametz Wood.
Fierce burned the sun, yet cheeks were pale, / For ice hail they had leaden hail; / In that fine forest, green and big, / There stayed unbroken not one twig.
They sang, they swore, they plunged in haste, / Stumbling and shouting through the waste; / The little "Saucepan" flamed on high, / Emblem of hope and ease gone by.
Rough pit-boys from the coaly South, / They sang, even in the cannon's mouth; / Like Sunday's chapel, Monday's inn, / The death-trap sounded with their din.
The storm blows over, Sun comes out, / The choir breaks up with jest and shout, / With what relief I watch them part -- / Another note would break my heart!