War Girls
Jessie Pope
There's the girl who clips your ticket for the train,
And the girl who speeds the lift from floor to floor,
There's the girl who does a milk-round in the rain,
And the girl who calls for orders at your door.
Strong, sensible, and fit,
They're out to show their grit,
And tackle jobs with energy and knack.
No longer caged and penned up,
They're going to keep their end up
Till the khaki boys come marching back.
Notes
Dulce et decorum est
Wilfred Owen
Detail
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Lots of separate jobs, so little detail
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed
One scene, much detail through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
Verbs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
e.g.clips speeds calls marching
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
e.g. limped, coughing, cursed, trudge Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped
behind.
There's the motor girl who drives a heavy van,
There's the butcher girl who brings your joint of
meat,
There's the girl who cries 'All fares, please!' like a
man,
And the girl who whistles taxis up the street.
Beneath each uniform
Beats a heart that's soft and warm,
Though of canny mother-wit they show no lack;
But a solemn statement this is,
They've no time for love and kisses
Till the khaki soldier boys come marching home.
Adjectives
e.g. strong, sensible, fit, soft, warm
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!–An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
e.g. knock-kneed, haunting, distant, blood-shod And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
Point of view
First person In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
Third person
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
Rhythm and Rhyme
Read aloud, what are the effects of the rhythms
and rhymes of the two poems?
??
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
Imagery
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
e.g. obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
© Teachit 2009