Poems of the Great War Read online

  POEMS of the

  GREAT WAR

  An Anthology

  1914–1918

  A Running Press® Miniature Edition™

  © 2014 by Running Press

  All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013934594

  ISBN 978-0-7624-5335-1

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  Contents

  Introduction

  John Masefield: 1878–1967

  August, 1914

  Rudyard Kipling: 1865–1936

  For All We Have and Are

  Rupert Brooke: 1887–1915

  The Soldier

  Fragment

  Edward Thomas: 1878–1917

  Fifty Faggots

  This Is No Case of Petty Right or Wrong

  Lights Out

  The Owl

  When First

  John McCrae: 1872–1918

  In Flanders Fields

  Charles Hamilton Sorley: 1895–1915

  To Germany

  When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead

  Isaac Rosenberg: 1890–1918

  The Dead Heroes

  Marching: as seen from the left file

  From France

  Returning, We Hear the Larks

  Richard Aldington: 1882–1962

  Bombardment

  Wilfred Owen: 1893–1918

  Anthem for Doomed Youth

  Greater Love

  Mental Cases

  Spring Offensive

  Wilfred Gibson: 1878–1962

  Air-Raid

  Ivor Gurney: 1890–1937

  To the Poet Before Battle

  Pain

  The Dearness of Common Things

  The Target

  First Time In

  Robert Graves: 1895–1985

  When I’m Killed

  The Assault Heroic

  Corporal Stare

  Recalling War

  Harold Monro: 1878–1932

  Officers’ Mess

  Siegfried Sassoon: 1886–1967

  Counter-Attack

  Dreamers

  Prelude: The Troops

  The Rear-Guard

  Edgell Rickword: 1898–1982

  Moonrise over Battlefield

  The Soldier Addresses His Body

  War and Peace

  Herbert Read: 1893–1968

  The Retreat

  Thomas Hardy: 1840–1928

  Men Who March Away: Song of the Soldiers

  And There Was a Great Calm: On The Signing of the Armistice November 11, 1918

  Credits

  Introduction

  The poets of World War I, “The Great War,” continue to hold a distinctive place in modern English literature. This generation of “Soldier Poets” was eager to reveal the brutal realities of war in an honest and straightforward manner. Eschewing the romanticized themes and language of the Victorian poets, their writing emerged as reportage with a new style that was unadorned, immediate. What had once been celebrated as a courageous military feat in a poem like Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” was now transformed to a heartless depiction of humanity in Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem of Doomed Youth”—“What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?” Underscoring the soulless nature of the modern industrial era, this new generation’s bleak message was clear: war is merciless, death is senseless.

  At the height of the war, this stark poetry was immensely popular. Hundreds of thousands of poems were written and published in those years between 1914 and 1918. Yet only a few hundred poems have endured. Most of the poets represented in this anthology experienced the war firsthand, part of a crop of well-educated young men serving in battle, often with literary aspirations. The careers of a few such as Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Ivor Gurney, and Herbert Read were launched, their reputations enduring throughout much of the twentieth century. Yet tragically, several others were killed in battle or died of disease or infection: Rupert Brooke, Charles Hamilton Sorley, Edward Thomas, Isaac Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen, John McCrae; their talent and immense potential woefully cut short. Even the older men who did not serve in combat—already-established writers like Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Hardy—were deeply affected by loss, overcome by the sense of despair that permeated the consciousness of the country. “Sorrows manifold,” Hardy wrote on the signing of the Armistice, November 11, 1918, “Among the young, among the weak and old, And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered, ‘Why?’”

  John Masefield

  (1878–1967)

  August, 1914

  John Masefield

  How still this quiet

  cornfield is to-night!

  By an intenser glow the

  evening falls,

  Bringing, not darkness, but

  a deeper light;

  Among the stooks a

  partridge covey calls.

  The windows glitter on the

  distant hill;

  Beyond the hedge the

  sheep-bells in the fold

  Stumble on sudden music

  and are still;

  The forlorn pine woods

  droop above the wold.

  An endless quiet valley

  reaches out

  Past the blue hills into the

  evening sky;

  Over the stubble, cawing,

  goes a rout

  Of rooks from harvest,

  flagging as they fly.

  So beautiful it is, I never

  saw

  So great a beauty on these

  English fields

  Touched by the twilight’s

  coming into awe,

  Ripe to the soul and rich

  with summer’s yields. . . .

  These homes, this valley

  spread below me here,

  The rooks, the titled stacks,

  the beasts in pen,

  Have been the heartfelt

  things, past speaking dear

  To unknown generations of

  dead men,

  Who, century after century,

  held these farms,

  And, looking out to watch

  the changing sky,

  Heard, as we hear, the

  rumours and alarms

  Of war at hand and danger

  pressing nigh.

  And knew, as we know, that

  the message meant

  The breaking off of ties, the

  loss of friends,

  Death like a miser getting in

  his rent,

  And no new stones laid

  where the trackway ends.

  The harvest not yet won,

  the empty bin,

  The friendly horses taken

  from the stalls,

  The fallow on the hill not

  yet brought in,

  The cracks unplastered in

  the l
eaking walls.

  Yet heard the news, and

  went discouraged home,

  And brooded by the fire

  with heavy mind,

  With such dumb loving of

  the Berkshire loam

  As breaks the dumb hearts

  of the English kind,

  Then sadly rose and left the

  well-loved Downs,

  And so by ship to sea, and

  knew no more

  The fields of home, the

  byres, the market towns,

  Nor the dear outline of the

  English shore,

  But knew the misery of the

  soaking trench,

  The freezing in the rigging,

  the despair

  In the revolting second of

  the wrench

  When the blind soul is flung

  upon the air,

  And died (uncouthly, most)

  in foreign lands

  For some idea but dimly

  understood

  Of an English city never

  built by hands

  Which love of England

  prompted and made

  good. . . .

  If there be any life beyond

  the grave,

  It must be near the men and

  things we love,

  Some power of quick

  suggestion how to save,

  Touching the living soul as

  from above.

  An influence from the Earth

  from those dead hearts

  So passionate once, so deep,

  so truly kind,

  That in the living child the

  spirit starts,

  Feeling companioned still,

  not left behind.

  Surely above these fields a

  spirit broods

  A sense of many watchers

  muttering near,

  Of the lone Downland with

  the forlorn woods

  Loved to the death,

  inestimably dear.

  A muttering from beyond

  the veils of Death

  From long-dead men, to

  whom this quiet scene

  Came among blinding tears

  with the last breath,

  The dying soldier’s vision of

  his queen.

  All the unspoken worship of

  those lives

  Spent in forgotten wars at

  other calls

  Glimmers upon these fields

  where evening drives

  Beauty like breath, so

  gently darkness falls.

  Darkness that makes the

  meadows holier still,

  The elm trees sadden in the

  hedge, a sigh

  Moves in the beech clump

  on the haunted hill,

  The rising planets deepen

  in the sky,

  And silence broods like

  spirit on the brae,

  A glimmering moon begins,

  the moonlight runs

  Over the grasses of the

  ancient way

  Rutted this morning by the

  passing guns.

  —1914

  Rudyard Kipling

  (1865–1936)

  For All We Have and Are

  Rudyard Kipling

  For all we have and are,

  For all our children’s fate,

  Stand up and take the war.

  The Hun is at the gate!

  Our world has passed away,

  In wantonness o’erthrown.

  There is nothing left to-day

  But steel and fire and stone!

  Though all we knew depart,

  The old Commandments

  stand:

  “In courage keep your

  heart,

  In strength lift up your

  hand.”

  Once more we hear the

  word

  That sickened earth of

  old: —

  “No law except the Sword

  Unsheathed and

  uncontrolled.”

  Once more it knits

  mankind,

  Once more the nations go

  To meet and break and bind

  A crazed and driven foe.

  Comfort, content, delight—

  The ages’ slow-bought

  gain—

  They shrivelled in a night.

  Only ourselves remain

  To face the naked days

  In silent fortitude,

  Through perils and dismays

  Renewed and re-renewed.

  Though all we made depart,

  The old Commandments

  stand:

  “In patience keep your

  heart,

  In strength life up your

  hand.”

  No easy hope or lies

  Shall bring us to our goal,

  But iron sacrifice

  Of body, will, and soul.

  There is but one task for

  all—

  One life for each to give.

  Who stands if Freedom fall?

  Who dies if England live?

  —1914

  Rupert Brooke

  (1887–1915)

  The Soldier

  Rupert Brooke

  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.

  —1915

  Fragment

  Rupert Brooke

  I strayed about the deck, an

  hour, to-night

  Under a cloudy moonless

  sky; and peeped

  In at the windows, watched

  my friends at table,

  Or playing cards, or

  standing in the doorways,

  Or coming out into the

  darkness. Still

  No one could see me.

  I would have thought of

  them

  —Heedless, within a week

  of battle—in pity,

  Pride in their strength and

  in the weight and

  firmness

  And link’d beauty of bodies,

  and pity that

  This gay machine of

  splendour’ld soon be

  broken,

  Thought little of, pashed,

  scattered . . . .

  Only, always,

  I could but see them—

  against the lamplight—

  pass

  Like coloured shadows,

  thinner than filmy glass,

  Slight bubbles, fainter than

  the wave’s faint light,

  That broke to phosphorus

  out in the night,

  Perishing things and

  strange ghosts—soon to

  die

  To other ghosts—this one,

  or that, or I.

  —1915

  Edward Thomas

  (1878–1917)

  Fifty Faggots
/>
  Edward Thomas

  There they stand, on their

  ends, the fifty faggots

  That once were underwood

  of hazel and ash

  In Jenny Pink’s Copse. Now,

  by the hedge

  Close packed, they make a

  thicket fancy alone

  Can creep through with the

  mouse and wren. Next

  Spring

  A blackbird or a robin will

  nest there,

  Accustomed to them,

  thinking they will remain

  Whatever is for ever to a

  bird.

  This Spring it is too late; the

  swift has come,

  ‘Twas a hot day for carrying

  them up:

  Better they will never warm

  me, though they must

  Light several Winters’ fires.

  Before they are done

  The war will have ended,

  many other things

  Have ended, maybe, that I

  can no more

  Foresee or more control

  than robin and wren.

  —1915

  This Is No Case of Petty Right or Wrong

  Edward Thomas

  This is no case of petty right

  or wrong

  That politicians or

  philosophers

  Can judge. I hate not

  Germans, not grow hot

  With love of Englishmen, to

  please newspapers.

  Beside my hate for one fat

  patriot

  My hatred of the Kaiser is

  love true: —

  A kind of god he is, banging

  a gong.

  But I have not to choose

  between the two,

  Or between justice and

  injustice. Dinned

  With war and argument I

  read no more

  Than in the storm smoking

  along the wind

  Athwart the wood. Two

  witches’ cauldrons roar.

  From one the weather shall

  rise clear and gay;

  Out of the other an England

  beautiful

  And like her mother that

  died yesterday.

  Little I know or care if,

  being dull,

  I shall miss something that

  historians

  Can take out of the ashes

  when perchance

  The phoenix broods serene

  above their ken.