Great War Poetry, What's your favorite poem. Options

[larneman]

-- I Have A Rendezvous with Death by Alan Seeger (killed in action, 1916) has been posted on the forum in a new thread.

click here==>1914-1918 forum

Also a very moving poem.

Liam

[larneman]

This an interesting site. The HYDRA is a unique record of life at Craiglockhart in 1917-18, reporting on lectures, meetings, expeditions, hobbies and entertainments; patients also contributed topical jokes about the hospital, as well as verse, stories and cartoons. Wilfred Owen was editor for six issues from 21 July 1917; he took the chance to publish (anonymously) the first two poems of his own ever to appear in print, Song of Songs and The Next War, as well as two new poems by Sassoon, Dreamers and Wirers. Several more poems by Sassoon appeared in the New Series.


click here===>Hydra magazine 1917


click here for introduction page+++>>Startpage

Liam

[Steve Bramley]

Not my favourite, but interesting,

Wounded in the head by a shell splinter March 1916, died in the influenza epidemic 1918.

[marina]

made my eyes go funny , that one!
Marina

[Steve Bramley]

The desired effect?

Or just my scanning

S.

[marina]

Ah, your scanning is perfect. It was standing on my head to read the backwards bits that did me the damage!
Marina

[frev]

frev, A few more verses of Suvla Bay
                                        Then at last it was our turn to land
                                        From the slow panting barge, crammed as tight
                                        As a theatre, and all full of fight
                                        We sprang out on the enemy strand,
                                        In the dark of that wonderful night.
                                        Deep in my mind and ever bright
                                        Remains that first impress of war;
                                        The feeling of that foreign shore;
                                        The sounds, the scents, the starry night;
                                        Fresh from that hour for evermore.
                                        The breath of the thyme that we crushed;
                                        The bodies that lay as in sleep,
                                        The noises that made our hearts leap
                                        When we thought we were going to be rushed
                                        As the slow paced columns creep.
                                        The rumbling gunsof Sed-ul-Bahr
                                        Roared and muttered, we heard the crash
                                        Of high explosive, and saw the flash
                                        That lit the hills with magnesium star
                                        To guard from a sudden dash.
                                        But these were all to far away
                                        To claim our wonder very long;
                                        The glow in the east was waxing strong
                                        And we knew that with the dawning day
                                        We should join in the deep-voiced song.

                  The end of the first stanza of Suvla Bay "The Landing".
The next one is called "SHRAPNELL"

      Len

Just incase anyone else is still interested in reading more verses of John Still's epic poem "The Ballad of Suvla Bay" - thanks to the incredibly wonderful Bob Pike - I now have a copy of the entire saga. So here's the next bit entitled "Shrapnel":

SHRAPNEL

Out on the sunlit, bare hill-side,
Above the sea, where the world looked big,
We were caught by shrapnel and had to dig.
Scourged with fear and helped by pride
Under the sky that seemed so wide.

Hard, and stony, and stubborn ground,
Bitterly hard, and slow to yield;
But the men dug in on that sun-scorched field,
Crouched and dug and raised a mound,
While the bullets whined like an eager hound.

These are the signs of a modern hell:
First the bang of the hidden guns,
The droning tone of a shell that runs,
Then the crack of the bursting shell,
And puffs of dust where the bullets fell.

Tufts of white on a clear blue sky;
Flecks of smoke like cotton wool,
Pretty to watch, but their hearts are full
Of pain and death that rains from high,
And I watched with fear, but they passed me by.

No one to shoot. Nowhere to go.
Through all the digging there’s time to think:
Digging our graves on eternity’s brink:
Dig like the devil, yet time goes slow,
And death we see, but never a foe.

Cheers, Frev

[pwwbear]

I don't think there is a Canadian schoolchild alive who hasn't memorized In Flanders Field. And if by chance one should forget the words, they are on the back of the $10.

[Joe Walsh]

Survivors-Siegfried Sassoon

No doubt they'll soon get well, the shock and strain
Have caused their stammering disconnected talk.
Of course they're 'longing to go out again',-
These boys with old scared faces, learning to walk.
They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed
Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died-
Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud
Of glorious war that shatter'd all they're pride...
Men who went out to battle grim and glad;
Children with eyes that hate you broken and mad.

[larneman]

Was Vera Brittain considered a "War Poet" .

Was there any/more women War Poets.

Liam

[Tim Godden]

Liam,

Vera Brittain is a Diarist, not a poet per se.
The Penguin book of War Poetry has several female poets, all of whose names escape me for the time being. I will have a look and post them tomorrow if no one has beaten me to it.

Cheers,

Tim

[marina]

http://europeanhistory.about.com/gi/dynami...k%2Fbiogs99.htm


some female poets posted here
Marina

[larneman]

some female potes posted here

Thanks Marina, great link.

PS:-

This post has been edited by larneman: May 21 2005, 11:53 AM

[larneman]

Vera Brittain is a Diarist, not a poet per se.
The Penguin book of War Poetry has several female poets, all of whose names escape me for the time being. I will have a look and post them tomorrow if no one

Thanks Tim, looking forward to your Penguin posting.

Liam

[marina]

Thanks Marina, great link.

PS:- was not really interested in their sexual preferance

very funny! This'll tober you up! It;s an article about war poets of the north of Scotland - a few female poets discussed in there! Hard going but interesting!
Marina

[marina]

Before The Summer

When our men are marching lightly up and down,
When the pipes are playing through the little town,
I see a thin line swaying through wind and mud and rain
And the broken regiments come back to rest again.

Now the pipes are playing, now the drums are beat,
Now the strong battalions are marching up the street,
But the pipes will not be playing, and the bayonets will not shine,
When the regimnts I dream of come stumbling down the line.

Between the battered trenches their silent dead will lie
Quiet with grave eyes staring at the summer sky.
There is a mist upon them so that I cannot see
The faces of my friends who walk the little town with me.

Lest we see a worse thing than it is to die,
Live ourselves and see our friends cold beneath the sky,
God grant we too be lying there in wind and mud and rain
Before the broken regiments come stumbling back again.

E.A. MacIntosh
1916, before the Somme

[Cotswold]

I was shown this Poem whilst on my first visit to the Battlefields and I think about it each time I visit a different CWGC Cemetery and read the headstones. I do know of an elderly gentleman who visited the grave of his father for the first time recently, his family had always thought he was on the Menin Gate but on a recent visit to Ypres they were told that he was actually buried down on the Somme. A member of this forum kindly drove this man and his son down to the Somme to their father's/grandfather's grave. Such a sad story but with a very happy ending. A son reunited with his father after all these years. So the poem below is very apt.
Incidently, I do not know the author of the poem.

THE VISITORS

I half awoke to a strange new calm
In a sleep that would not clear,
For this was the sleep to cure all harm
And free us all from fear.

Fire had come from left and right
With shrapnel shell and flame,
To turn my sunlit days to night,
Where no one now would know my name.

Years passed me by as I waited,
Missed the generations yet to come;
Sadly, I knew I would not be fated,
To be a father, hold a son.

I heard again the sound of War
When twenty years of sleep had gone,
For five long years or maybe more,
Until peace at last, once more had come.

More years passed, new voices came,
The stones and trenches to explore
But no one came to call my name,
As I waited and waited evermore.

Each time I thought, perhaps, perhaps,
Perhaps this time, they might find me,
But they only came for other chaps,
No one came to set me free.

Through lonely years of vigil kept,
To look for me they never came,
Nobody searched or ever wept,
Nobody stayed to call my name.

Until that lovely summer’s day,
I heard voices soft and strained with tears,
And then I knew that THEY had come,
To roll away those wasted years.

Their hearts reached out to hold me,
To make me whole like other men,
For they had come just to see me,
And take me home with them.


Now I’m at peace and free to roam
Where’re my family call my name,
Today my soul was called back home,
For today my family came.

Regards,
Donna

[larneman]

Some nice pieces of poetry and information on the WW1 poets on this site.


Poets Killed On The First Day of the Somme


Poets of the First World War

enjoy

Liam

This post has been edited by larneman: Jun 10 2005, 05:40 PM

[Cotswold]

Liam,
Many thanks for the link.

Kind Regards,
Donna

[marina]

Beautiful sites, Liam.
Marina

[Pozieres]

I've never shared this with anyone , but I wrote this some time ago, hope you like it.

Champagne.

October the tenth, Nineteen Fifteen,
Kitchener’s new army, loyal and keen.
The great adventure, prove your manhood,
Does’nt seem so nice in the Passchendaele mud.
A memory in sunshine, I kissed Beth at the quay,
Joined with my pals and we crossed the sea.
Two years later I lie in a trench,
Trying to cope with the damp and the stench.
This is no great adventure, It’s only pain,
I eat a dry biscuit while Haig drinks champagne.

How can I hate that man over there?
When he looks just like me,with the same coloured hair.
His wife just like mine ,sits up all night,
Hoping her Love comes home from the fight.
But they say he’s the enemy, they call him the Hun,
I took the King’s shilling and they gave me a gun.
Cold mud and smoke, death and disease,
Ghostly stumps that once looked like trees.
This is no great adventure, on the Ypres plain,
I’m cold, wet and hungry while Haig drinks champagne.

It’s a few weeks now since I lost my best mate,
Near Pilckens Ridge, can’t remember the date.
John lived in our street, we answered the call,
I’ll have to tell his wife, I saw him fall.
This is where I end my tale,
Of so called glories at Passchendaele.
I think we’ll win, but I don’t know when,
How many more lads will die before then?
Two hundred yards, they call that a gain,
Ten thousand dead, while Haig drinks champagne.

[dplatt]

It’s very early morning and perhaps I’m a little weak but I couldn’t do it!

I tried to read this entire thread but, by the time I re-read Buchan’s Home Thoughts From Abroad I could go no further.
________________________________________________________

Poems by those men who have suffered action, I find, are the most striking and I must settle for the obvious ones, I’m afraid. Virtually all Wilfred Owen’s with particular emphasis on 'Inspection' and 'Spring offensive'. Standing out is 'Tommy' although Kipling was never a soldier – at least he was not in the army!

However, I’m always moved by the simple ‘new words to old tunes’ that Tommy himself wrote – Gas last night, Fred Karno’s Army. Or the idea of very young men joyfully singing ‘Tipperary’ as they march off…

Please indulge me with this one, though.

HIS MATE

There’s a broken battered village
Somewhere up behind the line,
There’s a dug-out and a bunk there,
That I used to say were mine.

I remember how I reached them,
Dripping wet and all forlorn,
In the dim and dreary twilight
Of a weeping summer dawn.

All that week I’d buried brothers,
In one bitter battle slain,
In one grave I laid two hundred.
God! What sorrow and what rain.

And that night I’d been in trenches,
Seeking out the sodden dead,
And just dropping them in shell holes,
With a service swiftly said.

For the bullets rattled round me,
But I couldn’t leave them there,
Water-soaked in flooded shell holes,
Reft of common Christian prayer.

So I crawled round on my belly,
And I listened to the roar
Of the guns that hammered Thiepval,
Like big breakers on the shore.

Then there spoke a dripping sergeant,
When the time was growing late,
‘Would you please bury this one,
‘Cause‘e used to be my mate?’

So we groped our way in darkness
To a body lying there,
Just a blacker lump of blackness,
With a red blotch on his hair.

Though we turned him gently over,
Yet I still can hear the thud,
As the body fell face forward,
And then settled in the mud.

We went down upon our faces,
And I said the service through,
From ‘I am the Resurrection’
To the last, the great ‘adieu’.

When a sudden light shot soaring
Silver swift and like a sword,
We stood up to give the Blessing,
And commended him to the Lord.

At a stroke it slew the darkness,
Flashed its glory on the mud,
And I saw the sergeant staring
At a crimson clot of blood.

There are many kinds of sorrow
In this world of Love and Hate,
But there is no sterner sorrow
Than a soldier’s for his mate.




Padre G.A. Studdert Kennedy M.C., C.F.
(Woodbine Willie)

Thank you,

David.

[angie999]

Except for excerpts printed in history books, I have never read any.

[Ozzie]

Thanks for sharing these poems, people. I'll go and dry my eyes now.
They certainly make one a bit emotional.

Kim

[marina]

It’s very early morning and perhaps I’m a little weak but I couldn’t do it!

I tried to read this entire thread but, by the time I re-read Buchan’s Home Thoughts From Abroad I could go no further.
________________________________________________________

Good one, David.
Marina