World War I Poetry
A Collection of Haunting Verses from the Great War
Introduction by Dr Spencer Jones
Introduction
William Wordsworth believed that ‘all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’. It is perhaps little wonder that war, with all its tremendous and conflicting emotions, has so often proved a source of inspiration for poets. From Homer’s Illiad to Lord Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade and beyond, images of war have produced some of history’s most enduring poetry.
Yet even in this rich field, there is something exceptional about the poetry of World War I. Such is the cultural and literary importance of the poetry from this conflict that the term “war poets” has become synonymous with the trenches of 1914–18. This mirrors the uniqueness of the fighting. At the time, it was the largest, bloodiest and most intensely fought war in human history. The scale of the conflict meant that entire nations were mobilized. Britain raised the largest army in its history, filling the ranks first with volunteers, and later with conscripts. This unprecedented level of participation meant that men and women were suddenly exposed to a new way of life. Previous social norms were abandoned as women took on jobs formerly undertaken by males, whilst men who had never travelled beyond their home village suddenly found themselves in the fields of France or on the beaches of Gallipoli.
For soldiers in the front line, the experience was disorientating. War had been portrayed in a romantic light before the conflict, but troops soon discovered that the fighting of World War I bore no resemblance to the heroic image beloved by artists. Combat was appallingly violent. The machine technology of the early 20th century was harnessed and brought to bear against flesh and bone. Individuals were powerless against the overwhelming weight of bullets, shrapnel and poison gas that swept the battlefields. The Germans gave it a word: materialschlacht or ‘the battle of material’. The fighting mutilated bodies and damaged minds. The previously unknown phenomenon of ‘shell shock’, now known as post-traumatic stress disorder, was first observed during the war.
The sheer novelty of the conditions made it difficult for participants to express the sights and sounds they faced. In an era when photography and film were in their infancy and unable to capture the reality of battle, poetry offered a penetrating insight into the realities of this new form of warfare. The best poems allow the reader to go beyond the sepia photographs and, for a moment, experience the war in full colour. The vivid imagery in the most famous of World War I poems leaves a profound impression. Lines such as ‘Of poisonous fumes that scorched the night / With their sulphurous demon danks’ in William Wilfred Campbell’s ‘Langemark at Ypres’ or ‘Manic Earth! Howling and flying’ as it is churned by artillery fire in Isaac Rosenberg’s ‘Dead Man’s Dump’ serve to remind the reader that the war was neither colourless nor silent.
The poetry of World War I has created a lasting image of horror and futility in the public conscious. Yet the motivations of war poets were varied and their experiences could often be ambiguous. War itself is a complex interplay of conflicting emotions: despair, misery, terror, comradeship, exhilaration, and even glory. This emotional ambiguity is reflected in much of the best war poetry. Perhaps the most famous example is found in John McCrae’s In Flanders Fields. The first two verses are often quoted as an example of anti-war poetry, whilst the bellicose third verse is marginalized or even ignored.
War poetry underwent a noticeable change as the war dragged on. In an unconscious echo of the work of William Blake, innocence gave way to experience. The jingoist appeals of Jessie Pope and the romantic sacrifice extoled by Rupert Brooke found an audience in the late summer of 1914. But the mood changed as the reality of war became apparent. The all-volunteer British Army of 1914–15 fought bravely and suffered terribly, but could not secure victory. Conscription was introduced in 1916 to ensure sufficient men for the great Allied offensive at the Battle of the Somme. More British casualties were suffered in the five months of this battle than in the previous two years combined, yet it failed to breach the German lines. In 1917, came the Third Battle of Ypres; a mud-stricken, attritional nightmare that became an emblem of the war itself. After three years of war, the hopeful spirit of 1914 was long gone. War poetry assumed a markedly darker tone in 1917–18, adopting themes of frustration, disenchantment and even despair.
The famous poems of these latter years of the war are often cited as representing the experience of the whole British Army. This is misleading. Many published war poets were officers of the educated class who found the deprived conditions of trench life and the roar of battle utterly alien. But for private soldiers drawn from noisome inner city slums and accustomed to work in heavy industry, the transition was rather different. Furthermore, in an army of millions, there was no such thing as a universal experience. What war poetry does offer is a snapshot into the mind of the poet at that moment in time. It is colourful, powerful, moving and thought-provoking. It provides an injection of raw emotion into a conflict that continues to fascinate us a century later. The remarkable endurance of the poetry of World War I is testament to its merit and importance. It deserves to be read, studied and enjoyed for many decades to come.
Into Battle
The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun’s gaze glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze;
And life is Colour and Warmth and Light,
And a striving evermore for these;
And he is dead who will not fight;
And who dies fighting has increase.
The fighting man shall from the sun
Take warmth, and life from glowing earth;
Speed with the light-foot winds to run,
And with the trees to newer birth;
And find, when fighting shall be done,
Great rest, and fullness after dearth.
All the bright company of Heaven
Hold him in their bright comradeship,
The Dog-star, and the Sisters Seven,
Orion’s belt and sworded hip:
The woodland trees that stand together,
They stand to him each one a friend;
They gently speak in the windy weather;
They guide to valley and ridge’s end.
The kestrel hovering by day,
And the little owls that call by night,
Bid him be swift and keen as they,
As keen of ear, as swift of sight.
The blackbird sings to him: ‘Brother, brother,
If this be the last song you shall sing,
Sing well, for you may not sing another;
Brother, sing.’
In dreary doubtful waiting hours,
Before the brazen frenzy starts,
The horses show him nobler powers;
O patient eyes, courageous hearts!
And when the burning moment breaks,
And all things else are out of mind,
And only joy of battle takes
Him by the throat and makes him blind,
Through joy and blindness he shall know,
Not caring much to know, that still
Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so
That it be not the Destined Will.
The thundering line of battle stands,
And in the air death moans and sings;
But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,
And Night shall fold him in soft wings.
Julian Grenfell
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W. B. Yeats
On Being Asked for a War Poem
I think it better that in times like these
A poet’s mouth be silent, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter’s night.
W. B. Yeats
I. Peace
Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping!
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary;
Leave the sick hearts that honor could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!
Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there,
But only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.
Rupert Brooke
II. Safety
Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest
He who has found our hid security,
Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest,
And heard our word, ‘Who is so safe as we?’
We have found safety with all things undying,
The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,
The deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying,
And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth.
We have built a house that is not for Time’s throwing.
We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever.
War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,
Secretly armed against all death’s endeavour;
Safe though all safety’s lost; safe where men fall;
And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.
Rupert Brooke
III. The Dead
BLOW out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
That men call age; and those who would have been,
Their sons, they gave, their immortality.
Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,
And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
And we have come into our heritage.
Rupert Brooke
IV. The Dead
These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.
There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.
Rupert Brooke
V. The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Rupert Brooke