The War Poets: An Introduction

Modern poetry grew out of the First World War.dead
English verse altered under the impact of massAcross your dreams in pale battalions go,
murder in the trenches 1914-1918 and ceased toSay not soft things as other men have said,
be cosy. The war spread to Russia and Italy andThat you'll remember. For you need not so.
Turkey and into the Middle East, but the WesternGive them not praise. For, deaf, how should they
Front in France was the focus of attention atknow
home. The opening bombardment on the SommeIt is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
was heard in London.Poetry came closer to news.Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears
Poets became war correspondents of feeling andflow.
suffering rather than celebrants of glory, honour,Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
patria and remembrance. They ceased to be(Charles Hamilton Sorley)After two years of
crudely national. This is not to claim that all poetrywar, Brooke's notions had melted. Casualty lists
had hitherto been glossy magazine verse or thatappeared in the papers every day and the worst
wars had never been reported graphically. Thecame in July 1916. The First Battle of the Somme
change and difference lay in mud and bloodclaimed over a million dead and wounded on all
becoming fit subjects for poetry.One of the mostsides. On Day 1 the British suffered almost 60,000
anthologised poems in the language is Rupertcasualties of which 20,000 were reported dead or
Brooke's 'The Soldier': Romantic, dreamy, patriotic:missing. Sorley's poem no longer seemed seditious:
even the air has nationality. It's a poem aboutit sounded all too accurate.Siegfried Sassoon
falling asleep and waking up dead and not feeling a(1886-1967) was an aristocrat who won the
thing except happy. Falling, yes, that word isMilitary Cross in the First World War and became
deliberate - falling and rising. It celebrates memoriala pacifist. He composed a protest statement in
resurrection and the suspension of time.If I should1917 which was published in The Times
die, think only this of me:newspaper and read aloud in Parliament. After this
That there's some corner of a foreign fieldhe was diagnosed as suffering from shell shock
That is for ever England. There shall beand hospitalised. A fellow patient was Wilfred
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;Owen whose poems Sassoon collected and
A dust whom England bore, shaped, madepublished in 1920.Wilfred Owen (1893-1918): Gas
aware,attack had added a new dimension of terror: the
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways tofirst such attack occurred at Ypres in April 1915
roam,and in one of the most famous anti-war poems
A body of England's breathing English air,Wilfred Owen describes the 'ecstasy of fumbling'
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.for a gas mask and of one drowning and lost,
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,which, if you had seen it, you would not then
A pulse in the eternal mind, no lessrepeat the old lie from Horace's Odes that it's
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by Englandsweet and fitting to die for your country - dulce
given;et decorum est pro patria mori.That was it. That
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as herwas modernity. The givens and certainties of the
day;pre-war world had fallen to doubt and would go
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness.along with Tsars and Kaisers into the dustbin of
In hearts at peace, under an Englishhistory.Now regarded as the most poignant and
heaven.Brooke was a Greek scholar at Cambridgesignificant of the War Poets, Owen came from
and the central thought turns on the idea ofShropshire, went to school in Birkenhead than
cosmic memory (mnemosyne) in which he will bestudied agriculture in London and Reading. Before
'a pulse in the eternal mind' reverberating still to anthe war he lived in France while recovering from
English tempo. The poem may be classed amongan illness and was unfit to enlist in 1914 - but was
the literature of martyrology, though it's not aaccepted by the army in 1915. He was wounded
religious poem. It plays on the poetic turn of mindand received the Military Cross. Siegfried Sassoon
that dreams of being taken up in rapture for theencouraged his writing while they were together in
sake of the cause or the faith - this earth, thisan Edinburgh hospital and brought out the first
realm, this England invested with divinity, half inedition of Owen's poetry. Only five of his poems
love with easeful death.If this is the most patrioticwere published in his lifetime but they gained
verse after the speech before Agincourt in Henryattention. Well-wishers attempted to obtain a safe
V, notice the fundamental difference:posting for him but he returned to France late in
Shakespeare tells us 'Old men forget, yet all shallthe war and was killed a week before the
be forgot,' whereas Brooke is claiming theArmistice in November 1918. His poems were
opposite - that all shall be remembered,chosen by Benjamin Britten for The War Requiem
effortlessly. And, it is also the tranquillisation ofand his small collection of works was re-edited by
bad memory: the 'all evil shed away' is the thingsthe Poet Laureate Cecil Day Lewis.Read the full
you don't want to remember and which othersversion of this essay at:
are to be spared.The War Poets did not come toColbourn has published many articles about
treat war in the grand and glorious manner ofliterature on Literature-study-online at He is a
Brooke, who was ignorant of the matter beyondfreelance writer. He has written widely on English
the Iliad, and their verses gained more attentionLanguage Teaching and has published articles on
during the course of the war - in several casesliterature, linguistics, and computers in various
after their deaths. During the conflict, much ofjournals together with many Readers for
their writing would have been regarded asHeinemann and Macmillan Education. He has
defeatist and could not pass the censorshipcontributed articles on literature to The Essentials
restrictions imposed early in the war. Yet, by 1916of Literature in English post-1914, published by
the public mood had changed and the followingHodder Arnold in 2005.
appeared:When you see millions of the mouthless