A Newer Kingdom -- Anonymous

Guest poem sent in by Cornelius 0Brien

(Poem #1952) A Newer Kingdom The men who billow down the sea in ships Have earned these ages tributes justly high; But now is newly told on peoples's lips Of men in airy craft who seek the sky. Flung freely through their newer kingdom won, Clean wings describe the geometric arc, And hurtle down the starlight to the dark Or gambol with the spear-shafts of the sun. A newer kingdom and a newer race - They spurn with pride the lowly creed of earth, And glory in the boundlessness of space, Where worlds through aeons past have leapt to birth. Though mortal span is told in numbered weeks They brush eternity with youthful cheeks. -- Anonymous

Notes: I found this sonnet in the published memoirs of Gordon Fox. Gordon,
uncle of my wife Rosie, was a bomber pilot in World War Two. His memoirs,
written in diary form, were published privately about a year after his death
in September, 2001. His eldest son Kennedy Fox very kindly sent us a copy.
This sonnet ("A Newer Kingdom" is my name for it) was found by Gordon in an
anthology of air force poems. Kennedy says that neither he nor his father
had any idea who wrote the poem.

It is beautifully crafted, and to my heart and mind does what all good poems
do - draws pictures with words and stirs emotions in the reader or listener.
Yeats' "An Irish Airman Foresees his Death" could be a blood relative of
this lovely sonnet. I am also reminded of Wilfred Owen, although I cannot
really say why.

Cornelius