War Poetry
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War poetry
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World War One
When war broke out in Britain in 1914, the country had no
compulsory military service and therefore no huge
conscript army like other European countries. Britain was
to rely on a small professional force.
A campaign began to sign up volunteers with slogans like:
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Recruiting poems
Recruiting poems were written and published in papers to
encourage young men to go to war:
What will you lack, sonny, what will you lack
When the girls line up the street,
Shouting their love to the lads come back
From foe they rushed to beat?
Will you send a strangled cheer to the sky
And grin till your cheeks are red?
But what will you lack when your mate goes by
With a girl who cuts you dead?
from ‘Fall In’ by Harold Begbie, 1914
1. What is the poet’s view of war?
2. How does he encourage young men to sign up?
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Recruiting poems
Here are another four lines from the same poem. What
poetic techniques has the poet used here and why?
Repetition to emphasize the
point and leave the words
ringing in the ear.
Where will you look sonny, where will you look
When your children yet to be
Clamour to learn of the part you took
In the war that kept men free?
Emotive language used
to provoke a particular
reaction (guilt) in the
reader.
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Rhyme used to give the
poem a less serious and
more melodious,
memorable tone.
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Recruiting poems
What other words of persuasion could Begbie use to
convince young men to sign up?
Write your own stanza to add to his poem.
How might a young man who is
unwilling to go to war respond to
Begbie’s argument?
This famous poster was designed by Savile Lumley
during the World War I.
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Rupert Brooke – ‘Peace’
After recruiting poems, the trend was to write poems which
glorified the British cause in war. Rupert Brooke wrote
sonnets to express the chivalry of war:
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 honour could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!
How can you tell that Brooke had not yet been to war?
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Rupert Brooke – ‘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, blessed 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.
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Rupert Brooke
Brooke deeply believes that he is on the side of the
righteous because that is what he has been told.
A German writer, Remarque, wrote a novel called All Quiet
on the Western Front, based on the German experience of
World War I. Here is an extract:
"I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life
but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over
an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one
another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently,
innocently slay one another." Chapter 10.
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Rupert Brooke
Do you think the Germans believed they were on the
‘wrong side’ as Brooke suggests they are?
Do you agree with Brooke’s view of war?
Why do you think he wrote such poems before he
had even been to the front lines to fight?
The remains of a
German soldier,
November 1916
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Owen and Sassoon
Although recruiting poems and poems reflecting the
chivalry of war were very popular at the time, the poems
from World War I which have had a lasting power over us
are those poems which express the horrors and realities of
war.
Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon are the most well
known of such poets.
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Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)
This is an extract from a poem by Owen called ‘Disabled’.
He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.
1. What feelings do you think the man is suffering from
in this poem?
2. How is the reality of war in this poem different to
Brooke’s imagined glory?
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Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)
This is the last stanza from a poem by Owen called
‘Exposure’.
Tonight, this frost will fasten on this mud and us,
Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.
The burying-party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp,
Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,
But nothing happens.
1. How is the form of this poem different to Brooke’s
and Begbie’s pro-war poems?
2. If you were to paint an interpretation of this stanza,
how would you do it?
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Wilfred Owen – ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
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Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967)
Siegfried Sassoon was appalled by the pointlessness of
war and began a crusade against it through letters and
poems. He became a friend of Wilfred Owen when the two
men met at a hospital for victims of shellshock.
Does it matter? – losing your legs?...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.
Can you find any similarities between this poem and
Owen’s poetry?
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Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967)
This is a poem by Sassoon called ‘Base Details’.
If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And Speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You’d see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. ‘Poor young chap,’
I’d say – ‘I used to know his father well;
Yes, we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap.’
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I’d toddle safely home and die – in bed.
Copyright Siegfried Sassoon by kind permission of George Sassoon.
1. Who is Sassoon criticizing here and why is he doing it?
2. What words do you find particularly effective?
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World War I Poetry
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World War I Poetry
Write your own anti-war poem using the picture
below as a stimulus:
Mourning a fallen
comrade,
August 1917
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World War I leaflet
Do you agree or disagree with war?
How have the poems you have read affected your
decision?
Imagine you were living
at the time of World War
I. Write a leaflet which
is either anti-war or prowar which is to be
handed out to
prospective volunteers.
British raiding party under fire
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Essay preparation
Compare and contrast the views, ideals and
language of the anti-war and pro-war poets.
ANTI-WAR
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PRO-WAR
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