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igenlodeI've just finished working my way through a 1960s anthology of First World War poetry (presumably published for the 50th anniversary of the war, although I don't remember its actually saying so anywhere), which is very effective, and affecting. It's effective precisely because it isn't the standard modern selection (Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon) telling us what we're supposed to think about 'the War Poets' at a GCSE level of complexity; it's a compilation of what was actually written at the time, sent home on the back of letters, published in the newspapers, or found after death in uniform pockets. As the foreword puts it, it is largely a collection of lesser-known pieces, some of which are very good, most of which are good, and some of which are mediocre but poignant in their immediacy.
Most of the soldiers writing poetry, of course, were educated men, which means that most of them were among the young officers, which means that most of them died. The end of the book consists of a potted biography of each of the contributors, some of whom survived the war and went on to publish professionally, but many of whom went on to other careers and so far as I know were never stirred to verse again. Those who were killed are marked with an asterisk, but their biographies are rarely any shorter.
Considered as an anthology it is beautifully arranged, being divided into sections that are not quite chronological and not quite themed but which represent the different phases and stages of reactions to the war, and each of which is introduced by a snatch of popular song. The progress through from Tipperary Days to To Unknown Lands to Death's Kingdom, Home Front, Behind the Lines (among others) and O Jesus, Make it Stop to At Last, at Last! constitutes in itself a history of the conflict, without commentary. And the views given, being expressed without hindsight or even necessarily intent of publication, are not always the ones we would expect: Rupert Brooke was not the only one to view the society of 1914 as corrupt, decadent and dreary, from which a short sharp shock of war might draw out better things "as swimmers into cleanness leaping... from a world grown old and cold and weary". And even in the worst of the trench warfare there are poems from men celebrating fellowship within Hell or wildflowers in billets behind the line.
There are poems here from men whom one knows, but not in this context (who could imagine A.A.Milne as a 'war poet'? Or ee cummings? Or Robert Graves of "I, Claudius" fame? Or the Victorian Thomas Hardy?) as well as from men of whom one has never heard, or poems that are unfamiliar from people like Sassoon or Sir Henry Newbolt (hard to imagine the author of "Drake's Drum" watching cinema footage of the Battle of the Somme). There are poems from the campaigns in Africa and Mesopotamia -- where my own great-grandfather served, and fortunately for me survived, but which compared to Gallipoli is completely forgotten. And unlike most poetry anthologies, the final entries tend to have the writer's time and manner of death appended -- one can follow a man through the themed sections, come to recognise his style, and then abruptly be confronted by the fact that he died three days later :-(
Most of the soldiers writing poetry, of course, were educated men, which means that most of them were among the young officers, which means that most of them died. The end of the book consists of a potted biography of each of the contributors, some of whom survived the war and went on to publish professionally, but many of whom went on to other careers and so far as I know were never stirred to verse again. Those who were killed are marked with an asterisk, but their biographies are rarely any shorter.
Considered as an anthology it is beautifully arranged, being divided into sections that are not quite chronological and not quite themed but which represent the different phases and stages of reactions to the war, and each of which is introduced by a snatch of popular song. The progress through from Tipperary Days to To Unknown Lands to Death's Kingdom, Home Front, Behind the Lines (among others) and O Jesus, Make it Stop to At Last, at Last! constitutes in itself a history of the conflict, without commentary. And the views given, being expressed without hindsight or even necessarily intent of publication, are not always the ones we would expect: Rupert Brooke was not the only one to view the society of 1914 as corrupt, decadent and dreary, from which a short sharp shock of war might draw out better things "as swimmers into cleanness leaping... from a world grown old and cold and weary". And even in the worst of the trench warfare there are poems from men celebrating fellowship within Hell or wildflowers in billets behind the line.
There are poems here from men whom one knows, but not in this context (who could imagine A.A.Milne as a 'war poet'? Or ee cummings? Or Robert Graves of "I, Claudius" fame? Or the Victorian Thomas Hardy?) as well as from men of whom one has never heard, or poems that are unfamiliar from people like Sassoon or Sir Henry Newbolt (hard to imagine the author of "Drake's Drum" watching cinema footage of the Battle of the Somme). There are poems from the campaigns in Africa and Mesopotamia -- where my own great-grandfather served, and fortunately for me survived, but which compared to Gallipoli is completely forgotten. And unlike most poetry anthologies, the final entries tend to have the writer's time and manner of death appended -- one can follow a man through the themed sections, come to recognise his style, and then abruptly be confronted by the fact that he died three days later :-(
That day your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgement-day
And sat upright[...]Thomas Hardy
[...]And white roads vanishing beneath the sky
Called for our feet, and there were countless things
That we must see and do, while blood was high
And time still hovered on reluctant wings.W.N.Hodgson
[...]From the hills and valleys earth
Shouts back the sound of mirth,
Tramp of feet and lilt of song
Ringing all the road along.
All the music of their going,
Ringing swinging glad song-throwing,
Earth will echo still, when foot
Lies numb and voice mute.On marching men, on
To the gates of death with song
Sow your gladness for earth's reaping
So you may be glad through sleeping.
Strew your gladness on earth's bed,
So be merry, so be dead.C.H.Sorley
[...]Oh, the letters he wrote you,
And I can see them still,
Not a word of the fighting
But just the sheep on the hill
And how you should get the crops in
Ere the year get stormier,
And the Bosches have got his body,
And I was his officer.
You were only David's father,
But I had fifty sons
When we went up in the evening
Under the arch of the guns,
And we came back at twilight —
O God! I heard them call
To me for help and pity
That could not help at all.E.A.Mackintosh
[...]The colonel slept on in the bed of Sully
under the ravelling curtains: the leaves fell
and were blown away: the young men rotted
under the shadow of the tower
in a land of small clear silent streams
where the coming on of evening is
the letting down of blue and azure veils
over the clear and silent streams
delicately bordered by poplars.John Peale Bishop
[...]I crossed the blood-red ribbon, that once was No Man's Land,
I saw a misty daybreak and a creeping minute-hand,
And here the lads went over, and there was Harmsworth shot,
And here was William lying — but the new men know them not.
And I said, 'There is still the river, and still the stiff, stark trees:
To treasure here our story, but there are only these';
But under the white wood crosses the dead men answered low,
'The new men know not Beaucourt, but we are here — we know.'A.P.Herbert
[...]For now that I have seen
The curd-white hawthorn once again
Break out on the new green,
And through the iron gates in the long blank wall
Have viewed across a screen
Of rosy apple-blossom the grey spire
And low red roofs and humble chimney-stacks,
And stood in spacious courtyards of old farms,
And heard green virgin wheat sing to the breeze,
And the drone of ancient worship rise and fall
In the dark church, and talked with simple folk
Of farm and village, dwelling near the earth,
Among earth's ancient elemental things:
I can with heart made bold
Go back into the ways of ruin and death
With step unflagging and with quiet breath[...]Martin Armstrong
[...]Just as the scythe had caught them, there they lay,
A sheaf for Death, ungarnered and untied:
A crescent moon of men who showed the way
When first the Tanks crept out, till they too died:
Guardsmen, I think, but one could hardly tell,
It was a forward place beyond the crest,
Muddier than any place in Dante's hell,
Where sniping gave us very little rest.
At night one stumbled over them and swore;
Each day the rain hid them a little more.Max Plowman
no subject
Date: 2019-05-27 08:46 am (UTC)One even more so as the poet shares the surname (Hodgson) of my great-uncle who died in the war.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-27 10:01 am (UTC)He was a climber.
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/reverie-31/
no subject
Date: 2019-05-27 12:42 pm (UTC)