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Tag: death

  • The Poetry of World War I

    The Poetry of World War I

    Beauty Out Of War

    World War 1 was a terrible time in our history, but nothing can match the sadness, pain and conflict that soldiers faced on a day to day level.

    It’s hard to find any beauty that comes out from war, but below are a few poems that had been written by those who fought that capture the life that was lived amongst the death and hope of returning home once more.

    Poetry can act as an unwinding, a release from the turmoil in your mind, to express feelings and thoughts that can never be said.

    Have a look below.

     

     

    Roughly 10 million soldiers lost their lives in World War I, along with seven million civilians. The horror of the war and its aftermath altered the world for decades, and poets responded to the brutalities and losses in new ways.

     

    Just months before his death in 1918, English poet Wilfred Owen famously wrote, “This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War.”

     

    Here is  a sampling of poems written in English by both soldiers and civilians.

     

    Channel Firing

    BY THOMAS HARDY

    That night your great guns, unawares,
    Shook all our coffins as we lay,
    And broke the chancel window-squares,
    We thought it was the Judgment-day
    And sat upright. While drearisome
    Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
    The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
    The worms drew back into the mounds,
    The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, “No;
    It’s gunnery practice out at sea
    Just as before you went below;
    The world is as it used to be:
    “All nations striving strong to make
    Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
    They do no more for Christés sake
    Than you who are helpless in such matters.
    “That this is not the judgment-hour
    For some of them’s a blessed thing,
    For if it were they’d have to scour
    Hell’s floor for so much threatening….
    “Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
    I blow the trumpet (if indeed
    I ever do; for you are men,
    And rest eternal sorely need).”
    So down we lay again. “I wonder,
    Will the world ever saner be,”
    Said one, “than when He sent us under
    In our indifferent century!”
    And many a skeleton shook his head.
    “Instead of preaching forty year,”
    My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
    “I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.”
    Again the guns disturbed the hour,
    Roaring their readiness to avenge,
    As far inland as Stourton Tower,
    And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

    Such, Such is Death

    BY CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY

    Such, such is Death: no triumph: no defeat:
    Only an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean,
    A merciful putting away of what has been.
    And this we know: Death is not Life, effete,
    Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen
    So marvellous things know well the end not yet.
    Victor and vanquished are a-one in death:
    Coward and brave: friend, foe. Ghosts do not say,
    “Come, what was your record when you drew breath?”
    But a big blot has hid each yesterday
    So poor, so manifestly incomplete.
    And your bright Promise, withered long and sped,
    Is touched, stirs, rises, opens and grows sweet
    And blossoms and is you, when you are dead.

    Rain

    BY EDWARD THOMAS

    Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
    On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
    Remembering again that I shall die
    And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
    For washing me cleaner than I have been
    Since I was born into solitude.
    Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
    But here I pray that none whom once I loved
    Is dying tonight or lying still awake
    Solitary, listening to the rain,
    Either in pain or thus in sympathy
    Helpless among the living and the dead,
    Like a cold water among broken reeds,
    Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
    Like me who have no love which this wild rain
    Has not dissolved except the love of death,
    If love it be towards what is perfect and
    Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

    I Have a Rendezvous with Death

    BY ALAN SEEGER

    I have a rendezvous with Death
    At some disputed barricade,
    When Spring comes back with rustling shade
    And apple-blossoms fill the air—
    I have a rendezvous with Death
    When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
    It may be he shall take my hand
    And lead me into his dark land
    And close my eyes and quench my breath—
    It may be I shall pass him still.
    I have a rendezvous with Death
    On some scarred slope of battered hill,
    When Spring comes round again this year
    And the first meadow-flowers appear.
    God knows ’twere better to be deep
    Pillowed in silk and scented down,
    Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,
    Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
    Where hushed awakenings are dear …
    But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
    At midnight in some flaming town,
    When Spring trips north again this year,
    And I to my pledged word am true,
    I shall not fail that rendezvous.
    Article Credit: Poetry Foundation
    Image Credit: nickflicks