Tag: First world war poetry

Dreamers by Siegfried Sassoon

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

Dreamers is one of Sassoon’s less well-known war poems. It was written in 1917, after he had made his declaration against the war and been sent to Craiglockhart hospital. It strongly evokes the contrast between the soldiers’ present day in the trenches, in which they seem to be already dead, and their imaginings of the past. It seems impossible for them to ever return to their former lives.

I wonder whether it might have been an influence on Philip Larkin’s MCMXIV (1914), published in 1964. The imagery of pre-war innocence is rather similar.

And although that imagery may be different now, there are volunteer soldiers out there, perhaps thinking rather similar thoughts as I write this.

Dreamers by Siegfried Sassoon

Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land,
   Drawing no dividend from time’s to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
   Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
   Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
   They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
   And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
   And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
   And going to the office in the train.

Grass by Carl Sandburg

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

I don’t think Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) is as widely read in the UK as he has been in his native United States. Perhaps his declamatory, free verse style is more of an American taste. I had never even heard of him when I saw this poem displayed in a tube train carriage as part of the Poems on the Underground initiative some years ago. I think it was published in 1918.

What brought it back into my mind more recently? I think it must have been an article about the Ukraine war that I read not long ago, illustrated with a photograph of a trench that could have come from the first world war.

Nothing changes, I thought and that is the message of this poem. War seems to be a permanent part of the human condition. People forget. They don’t like to think about it, so nothing changes. The personification of the grass in this straightforward and direct poem represents the process of forgetting.    

Grass by Carl Sandburg

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
                                             I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
                                            What place is this?
                                            Where are we now?

                                            I am the grass.
                                            Let me work.

High Wood by John Stanley Purvis (Philip Johnstone)

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

I found this poem printed in a copy of The Old Front Line by John Masefield. It’s quite appropriate that it should be there because it uses a similar conceit. Just as Masefield describes the 1916 Somme battlefield from an imagined future after the war has ended, High Wood imagines the old trenches becoming a tourist attraction in peacetime.  

John Stanley Purvis wrote it under his pseudonym of Philip Johnstone in 1918. He served as a lieutenant in the war and was invalided out of the army after the battle of the Somme. It took the British three months to capture the German stronghold of High Wood in that battle.

He is not particularly well-known among the Great War poets, but deserves to be remembered for this striking poem. Its realistic and cynical tone still seems modern, resembling the work of Siegfried Sassoon, perhaps, rather than any of the other famous names.

It’s a reminder of how the first world war is the dividing line between two different ways of thinking about war and that after poems like High Wood, it was no longer possible for the more heroic sort of war poems, such as those by Tennyson or Newbolt, to be written.   

The poem has gained in force, because today we can see that exactly what he predicted came true. And after all this time tourists still visit the first world war battlefields.

High Wood by John Stanley Purvis (Philip Johnstone)

Ladies and gentlemen, this is High Wood,
Called by the French, Bois des Fourneaux,
The famous spot which in Nineteen-Sixteen,
July, August and September was the scene
Of long and bitterly contested strife,
By reason of its High commanding site.
Observe the effect of shell-fire in the trees
Standing and fallen; here is wire; this trench
For months inhabited, twelve times changed hands;
(They soon fall in), used later as a grave.
It has been said on good authority
That in the fighting for this patch of wood
Were killed somewhere above eight thousand men,
Of whom the greater part were buried here,
This mound on which you stand being…
                                                            Madame, please,

You are requested kindly not to touch
Or take away the Company’s property
As souvenirs; you’ll find we have on sale
A large variety, all guaranteed.
As I was saying, all is as it was,
This is an unknown British officer,
The tunic having lately rotten off.
Please follow me – this way…
                                                the path, sir, please,

The ground which was secured at great expense
The Company keeps absolutely untouched
And in that dug-out (genuine) we provide
Refreshments at a reasonable rate.
You are requested not to leave about
Paper, or ginger-beer bottles, or orange-peel,
There are waste-paper baskets at the gate.

1918

Now that You Too Must Shortly Go by Eleanor Farjeon

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

First World War poetry used to mean poems written by men who had served as soldiers on the Western Front. The work of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenburg and others concentrated on conditions on the battlefield and the terrible consequences of combat for those involved.

More recently, the definition has widened, helped by Andrew Motion’s 2003 anthology, to include poems written by women that deal with bereavement and the situation on the home front.

So here, in the run-up to Remembrance Day is a poignant poem about the moment when a couple must part which speaks for itself, really. It is by Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965), later a prolific author for children and perhaps best known today for the words to the hymn Morning has Broken.

Now that You Too Must Shortly Go by Eleanor Farjeon

Now that you too must shortly go the way
Which in these bloodshot years uncounted men
Have gone in vanishing armies day by day,
And in their numbers will not come again:

I must not strain the moments of our meeting
Striving for each look, each accent, not to miss,
Or question of our parting and our greeting,
Is this the last of all? is this—or this?

Last sight of all it may be with these eyes,
Last touch, last hearing, since eyes, hands, and ears,
Even serving love, are our mortalities,
And cling to what they own in mortal fears:—
But oh, let end what will, I hold you fast
By immortal love, which has no first or last.

Corporal Stare by Robert Graves

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

Following on from my previous post, it appears that Remembrance Day events will now be allowed to go ahead this coming Sunday, as long as they are outdoors and follow social distancing rules. Don’t they usually take place outdoors anyway? I suppose the point is that no church services can take place.

So here is another poem from one of the poets most closely associated with the first world war. It was written in 1917. Graves later gave a more detailed account of the real life incident that inspired the poem in his famous prose memoir, Goodbye to All That. He writes there: “Ghosts were numerous in France at that time”.

Corporal Stare by Robert Graves

Back from the line one night in June,
I gave a dinner at Bethune —
Seven courses, the most gorgeous meal
Money could buy or batman steal.
Five hungry lads welcomed the fish
With shouts that nearly cracked the dish;
Asparagus came with tender tops,
Strawberries in cream, and mutton chops.
Said Jenkins, as my hand he shook,
“They’ll put this in the history book.”
We bawled Church anthems in choro
Of Bethlehem and Hermon snow,
With drinking songs, a jolly sound
To help the good red Pommard round.
Stories and laughter interspersed,
We drowned a long La Bassée thirst —
Trenches in June make throats damned dry.
Then through the window suddenly,
Badge, stripes and medals all complete,
We saw him swagger up the street,
Just like a live man — Corporal Stare!
Stare! Killed last May at Festubert.
Caught on patrol near the Boche wire,
Torn horribly by machine-gun fire!
He paused, saluted smartly, grinned,
Then passed away like a puff of wind,
Leaving us blank astonishment.
The song broke, up we started, leant
Out of the window-nothing there,
Not the least shadow of Corporal Stare,
Only a quiver of smoke that showed
A fag-end dropped on the silent road.

Peace by Walter de la Mare

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

Remembrance Sunday is going to be a bit odd this year. The latest lockdown means that the familiar ceremonies at war memorials in towns and villages up and down the country will not now take place. We already knew that the ceremony at the Cenotaph in Whitehall was going to feature the politicians but not the public, and that there would be no march past. That seems a pity, as 2020 marks the centenary of the installation of the permanent memorial in Whitehall.

Here is a poem that does not fall into the usual definition of “first world war poetry”, as it was not written by a combatant and does not deal with life in the trenches. It was published in Walter de la Mare’s 1918 collection Motley.

De la Mare was already in his forties when he wrote it; how must he have felt twenty years later, when the peace he described was about to be shattered once again?  

Peace by Walter de la Mare

Night is o’er England, and the winds are still;
Jasmine and honeysuckle steep the air;
Softly the stars that are all Europe’s fill
Her heaven-wide dark with radiancy fair;
That shadowed moon now waxing in the west
Stirs not a rumour in her tranquil seas;
Mysterious sleep has lulled her heart to rest,
Deep even as theirs beneath her churchyard trees.

Secure, serene; dumb now the night-hawk’s threat;
The guns’ low thunder drumming o’er the tide;
The anguish pulsing in her stricken side….
All is at peace….But, never, heart, forget:
For this her youngest, best, and bravest died,
These bright dews once were mixed with bloody
      sweat.

A Private by Edward Thomas

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

DSCF3121 (5)

A poem by Edward Thomas, not so well known, but one of my favourites of his and appropriate for this week. Lest we forget and all that. . . .

 

This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors
Many a frosty night, and merrily
Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen and all bores:
“At Mrs Greenland’s Hawthorn Bush,” said he,
“I slept.” None knew which bush. Above the town,
Beyond “The Drover”, a hundred spot the down
In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps
More sound in France – that, too, he secret keeps.