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

[adrianjohn]

Here's another - not a favourite, but worth a place in this discussion and certainly emotive. Paints quite a picture, for me.

Titled: The Aisne
We first saw fire on the tragic slopes
Where the flood-tide of France's early gain,
Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes,
Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne.

Poet was American - Alan Seeger 1888/1916

He was killed at Belloy-en-Santerre on July 14 1916, while serving with the French Foreign Legion which he had joined in 1914. He had wanted 'to do his bit' and as the US had not yet entered the war, and he couldn't as an American citizen join the French army, he did 'the next best thing'. He left a bohemian life-style in New York to fight in Europe.

[Dragon]

Vera Brittain is a Diarist, not a poet

Anyone who writes poems is a poet.

Vera Brittain wrote at least two collections of poetry, including the book which was her first published work, Verses of a VAD (1918).

She is also a novelist and a memoirist.

Gwyn

[adrianjohn]

You're right Gwyn - although I would say that her work was so broad that she doesn't fit neatly under any particular banner. The fact is - she was a writer. The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English describes her as 'an author of autobiography, poetry and fiction'.

adrianjohn

[Dragon]

True, Adrian!

Another thought:

P'raps there should be a thread actually discussing poetry rather than just quoting it. And I don't mean whether Robert Graves could possibly have been on that particular square foot of soil on that date when he wrote about it, or whether the badge details in this Owen sonnet are correct........

Gwyn

[marina]

Here's another - not a favourite, but worth a place in this discussion and certainly emotive.  Paints quite a picture, for me.

Titled: The Aisne
We first saw fire on the tragic slopes
Where the flood-tide of France's early gain,
Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes,
Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne.

Poet was American - Alan Seeger 1888/1916

Rendezvous is my favourite of his.
Marina

[Derek Robertson]

David,

I read the poem before I knew who it was attributed to. And I thought that it was very, very good.

On reaching the end I found that it had been written by "Woodbine Willie" who was a favourite poet of mine many years ago.

I am pleased to see that my tastes haven't diluted over the years and that his poems still carry a great eloquence.

I
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.

[marina]

David,

I am pleased to see that my tastes haven't diluted over the years and that his poems  still carry a great eloquence.

They do indeed, Derek - I didn't know his work and found this link containing several poems - really good.

http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poet413.html

I liked Stretcher Bearers and The Secret

Marina

[marina]

And here's a whole collection:

http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/dasc/TUB.HTM#Page154

Marina

[Andrew P]

The following is one of my favourites.

Pozieres & Passchendaele by Oscar Walters

‘A hot sun hung in a brazen sky,
And the fields we trampled were brown and bare,
And our throats, you remember, were parched and dry,
When you got your issue at Pozieres

But earth and sky were a sodden mess,
And the mud was churned ‘neath a leaden hail;
And we lay in a muddle of filthiness
When I collected at Passchendaele

Summer and Winter, the season pass,
Spring and Autumn, they come and go
Skies of lead turn to skies of brass,
And where are the Diggers we used to know?

Faster and faster with each swift year
The Diggers go on their last lone trial,
Since you got your issue at Pozieres,
And I collected at Passchendaele.

And it may be near, or it may be far
And it may be a season of sun, or rain
When we say farewell to the things that are,
With a hope that it has not been all in vain

And it may be that everything will be clear
When we meet the Diggers beyond the veil
And we’ll find the reason for Pozieres,
And we’ll know the purpose of Passchendaele’

[marina]

Was browsing the first world war.com's literature site today and found this one by our old frined Anonymous. It has a wondeful momentum.

Any Soldier To His Son

What did I do, sonny, in the Great World War?
Well, I learned to peel potatoes and to scrub the barrack floor.
I learned to push a barrow and I learned to swing a pick,
I learned to turn my toes out, and to make my eyeballs click.
I learned the road to Folkestone, and I watched the English shore,
Go down behind the skyline, as I thought, for evermore.
And the Blighty boats went went by us and the harbour hove in sight,
And they landed us and sorted us and marched us "by the right".
"Quick march!" across the cobbles, by the kids who rang along
Singing "Appoo?" "Spearmant" "Shokolah?" throught dingy old Boulogne;
By the widows and the nurses and the niggers and Chinese,
And the gangs of smiling Fritzes, as saucy as you please.

I learned to ride as soldiers ride from Etaps to the Line,
For days and nights in cattle trucks, packed in like droves of swine.
I learned to curl and kip it on a foot of muddy floor,
And to envy cows and horses that have beds of beaucoup straw.
I learned to wash in shell holes and to shave myself in tea,
While the fragments of a mirror did a balance on my knee.
I learned to dodge the whizz-bangs and the flying lumps of lead,
And to keep a foot of earth between the sniper and my head.
I learned to keep my haversack well filled with buckshee food,
To take the Army issue and to pinch what else I could.
I learned to cook Maconochie with candle-ends and string,
With "four-by-two" and sardine-oil and any God-dam thing.
I learned to use my bayonet according as you please
For a breadknife or a chopper or a prong for toasting cheese.
I learned "a first field dressing" to serve my mate and me
As a dish-rag and a face-rag and a strainer for our tea.
I learned to gather souvenirs that home I hoped to send,
And hump them round for months and months and dump them in the end.
I learned to hunt for vermin in the lining of my shirt,
To crack them with my finger-nail and feel the beggars spirt;
I learned to catch and crack them by the dozen and the score
And to hunt my shirt tomorrow and to find as many more.

I learned to sleep by snatches on the firestep of a trench,
And to eat my breakfast mixed with mud and Fritz's heavy stench.
I learned to pray for Blighty ones and lie and squirm with fear,
When Jerry started strafing and the Blighty ones were near.
I learned to write home cheerful with my heart a lump of lead
With the thought of you and mother, when she heard that I was dead.
And the only thing like pleasure over there I ever knew,
Was to hear my pal come shouting, "There's a parcel, mate, for you."

So much for what I did do - now for what I have not done:
Well, I never kissed a French girl and I never killed a Hun,
I never missed an issue of tobacco, pay, or rum,
I never made a friend and yet I never lacked a chum.
I never borrowed money, and I never lent - but once
(I can learn some sorts of lessons though I may be borne a dunce).
I never used to grumble after breakfast in the Line
That the eggs were cooked too lightly or the bacon cut too fine.
I never told a sergeant just exactly what I thought,
I never did a pack-drill, for I never quite got caught.
I never punched a Red-Cap's nose (be prudent like your Dad),
But I'd like as many sovereigns as the times I've wished I had.
I never stopped a whizz-bang, though I've stopped a lot of mud,
But the one that Fritz sent over with my name on was a dud.
I never played the hero or walked about on top,
I kept inside my funk hole when the shells began to drop.
Well, Tommy Jones's father must be made of different stuff:
I never asked for trouble - the issue was enough.

So I learned to live and lump it in the lovely land of war,
Where the face of nature seems a monstrous septic sore,
Where the bowels of earth of earth hang open, like the guts of something slain,
And the rot and wreck of everything are churned and churned again;
Where all is done in darkness and where all is still in day,
Where living men are buried and the dead unburied lay;
Where men inhabit holes like rats, and only rats live there;
Where cottage stood and castle once in days before La Guerre;
Where endless files of soldiers thread the everlasting way,
By endless miles of duckboards, through endless walls of clay;
Where life is one hard labour, and a soldiers gets his rest
When they leave him in the daisies with a puncture in his chest;
Where still the lark in summer pours her warble from the skies,
And underneath, unheeding, lie the blank upstaring eyes.

And I read the Blighty papers, where the warriors of the pen
Tell of "Christmas in the trenches" and "The Spirit of our men";
And I saved the choicest morsels and I read them to my chum,
And he muttered, as he cracked a louse and wiped it off his thumb:
"May a thousand chats from Belgium crawl under their fingers as they write;
May they dream they're not exempted till they faint with mortal fright;
May the fattest rats in Dickebusch race over them in bed;
May the lies they've written choke them like a gas cloud till they're dead;
May the horror and the torture and the things they never tell
(For they only write to order) be reserved for them in Hell!"

You'd like to be a soldier and go to France some day?
By all the dead in Delville Wood, by all the nights I lay
Between our lines and Fritz's before they brought me in;
By this old wood-and-leather stump, that once was flesh and skin;
By all the lads who crossed with me but never crossed again,
By all the prayers their mothers and their sweethearts prayed in vain,
Before the things that were that day should ever more befall
May God in common pity destroy us one and all!

Anonymous poem contributed by Alick Lavers (e-mail)

[Ozzie]

For people interested in Kipling.

http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/au.../chapter11.html

Cheers
Kim

[Ozzie]

Not about men, and of another war, but speaks for the LH in the Great War as well, but.. my favourite.

The Last Parade by Banjo Paterson

WITH never a sound of trumpet,
With never a flag displayed,
The last of the old campaigners
Lined up for the last parade.
Weary they were and battered,
Shoeless, and knocked about;
From under their ragged forelocks
Their hungry eyes looked out.

And they watched as the old commander
Read out, to the cheering men,
The Nation’s thanks and the orders
To carry them home again.

And the last of the old campaigners,
Sinewy, lean, and spare—
He spoke for his hungry comrades:
‘Have we not done our share?

‘Starving and tired and thirsty
We limped on the blazing plain;
And after a long night’s picket
You saddled us up again.

‘We froze on the wind-swept kopjes
When the frost lay snowy-white.
Never a halt in the daytime,
Never a rest at night!

‘We knew when the rifles rattled
From the hillside bare and brown,
And over our weary shoulders
We felt warm blood run down,

‘As we turned for the stretching gallop,
Crushed to the earth with weight;
But we carried our riders through it—
Carried them perhaps too late.

‘Steel! We were steel to stand it—
We that have lasted through,
We that are old campaigners
Pitiful, poor, and few.

‘Over the sea you brought us,
Over the leagues of foam:
Now we have served you fairly
Will you not take us home?

‘Home to the Hunter River,
To the flats where the lucerne grows;
Home where the Murrumbidgee
Runs white with the melted snows.

‘This is a small thing surely!
Will not you give command
That the last of the old campaigners
Go back to their native land?’

. . . . .
They looked at the grim commander,
But never a sign he made.
‘Dismiss!’ and the old campaigners
Moved off from their last parade.

[Ozzie]

As some of these poems are copyright I'll just post the links for those interested in War Poetry.

http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-poetry/ww1/ww1-a.htm

http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-poetry/ww1/ww1-b.htm

http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-poetry...y-cat-index.htm

[marina]

As some of these poems are copyright I'll just post the links for those interested in War Poetry.

http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-poetry/ww1/ww1-a.htm

http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-poetry/ww1/ww1-b.htm

http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-poetry...y-cat-index.htm

Loved Willie McBride's Reply, Ozzie. Cheers for Suffert!
Marina

[marina]

'Spirit of Oz' about the Bali bombing. Sheer wonderful defiance - loved it, Ozzie.

Marina

[Duncan]

What are you guarding, Man at Arms, why do you watch and wait?
I guard the graves, said the Man at Arms,
I guard the graves by Flanders farms,
where the dead will rise at my call to arms,
and march to the Menin Gate.

When do they march then, Man at Arms, cold is the hour and late?
They march tonight, said the Man at Arms, with the moon on the Menin Gate.
They march when the midnight bids them go,
with their rifles slung and their pipes aglow,
along the roads, the roads they know,
the road to the Menin Gate.

What are they singing Man at Arms, as they march to the Menin Gate?
The marching songs, said the Man at Arms, that let them laugh at fate.
No more will the night be cold for them,
for the last tattoo has rolled for them,
and their souls will sing as of old for them,
as they march to the Menin Gate.

[marina]

Duncan - this poem reminded me of Will Longstaff's painting 'The Ghosts At The Menin Gate' , sometimes called The Menin Gate At Midnight.' You can see it here if you don't know it.

http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/menin/notes.htm

Marina

[Ozzie]

Marina,
Spirit of Oz struck me with it's raw emtion, and it was probably penned in one go. I listed the link becuase I don't know if it would have passed the moderaters.
The one I liked was Eulogy for a Veteran.

Kim

[frev]

Duncan - this poem reminded me of Will Longstaff's painting 'The Ghosts At The Menin Gate' , sometimes called The Menin Gate At Midnight.' You can see it here if you don't know it.

http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/menin/notes.htm

Marina

Marina
This image was floating through my mind as I read the poem too!
Frev

[marina]

Great minds, Frev! But I've always liked that picture. And the poem might have been written to accompany it.
Marina

[marina]

Marina,
Spirit of Oz struck me with it's raw emtion, and it was probably penned in one go. I listed the link becuase I don't know if it would have passed the moderaters.
The one I liked was Eulogy for a Veteran.

Kim

Hi, Kim
Yes, it's a lovely one. I've seen it attributed to Red Indians and to a religious group whose name escapes me. Our frined Anon gtes about.
Marina

[frev]

Great minds, Frev!  But I've always liked that picture.  And the poem might have been written to accompany it.
Marina

My sentiments exactly!

[salesie]

My favourite poem (Great War or otherwise) is by Robert Ernest Vernede, written only two weeks before he was killed in action in 1917:


A Listening Post.

"The sun's a red ball in the oak
And all the grass is grey with dew,
Awhile ago a blackbird spoke -
He didn't know the world's askew.

And yonder rifleman and I
Wait here behind the misty trees
To shoot the first man that goes by,
Our rifles ready on our knees.

How could he know that if we fail
The world may lie in chains for years
And England be a bygone tale
And right be wrong, and laughter tears?

Strange that this bird sits there and sings
While we must only sit and plan -
Who are so much the higher things -
The murder of our fellow man?

But maybe God will cause to be -
Who brought forth sweetness from the strong -
Out of our discords harmony
Sweeter than that bird's song."

When he fell, Vernede had only recently returned to active service after recovering from wounds. He'd refused to allow a friend in the War Office to find him work where he'd be safe, and he died leading his platoon in an attack on Havrincourt Wood on April 9th 1917.

He'd been at school with G. K. Chesterton, who remained a lifelong friend. On hearing of the news of his death, Chesterton wrote in a letter; "He had a curious intellectual independence....... It was so that he passed from the English country life he loved so much, with its gardening and dreaming, to an ambush and a German gun."

Vernede had experienced war more than once, yet, despite having a chance to avoid further horrors, he returned to the front. There are signs in this poem that he was developing into a more questioning poet - gone was the shallow patriotism of his earlier poems. But, does he simply question the perceived superiority of man over beast? Or is he saying that in order to have a greater awareness of our world then we have a price to pay? Saying that we don't get Owt for Nowt?

I've started to research this war poet, with a view to writing a docu-drama novel about his life and works. If anyone could provide any information about Vernede, no matter how small, either documtary or anecdotal, war service or before, I would be extremely grateful.


Cheers - salesie.

[Deleted_Bill100727_*]

Geez! That must be the world record! Mother & Son Both Well?

I have often read of, but never sighted, the special trench editions of "Ginger Mick"
by C J Dennis. Doesn't quite fit the gung - ho Aussie image. All them chappies sitting around reading poetry!
The censors would not allow  the "Battle of the Wazzir" to be included in the wartime editions, but it is now freely available. The poems sold 700,000 copies before 1920. [Probably only beaten by sales of The (other) Bible].
He shore talks funny though!
ooRoo
Pat

Hi Pat, C J Dennis, Melbourne, on Ginger Mick and his Doreen that worked in the pickle factory, he was smitten and gone when he bemoaned, "The world has got me snouted just a treat, cruel fortunes dirty left has smote my soul, and all them joys in life I held so sweet are up the pole", Fer as the poet sez, me 'eart as got the pip with yearning fer I dunno what.

Aussie's, never met more 'Fair Dinkum' people in my life.
Ooroo,
Bill.

[marina]

New poem which mentions the linked remains found at mametz Wood - today's Guardian newspaper:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/po...1640649,00.html

Nice one.
Marina