Poems of the Great War 1914 – 1918
PENGUIN BOOKS
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This collection first published by Penguin Books 1998
26
This collection copyright © Penguin Books, 1998
All rights reserved
Acknowledgements on p.x constitute an extension of this copyright page
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ISBN: 978-0-14-192530-1
Contents
Publisher’s Note
Acknowledgements
JOHN MCCRAE In Flanders Fields I
IVOR GURNEY Strange Hells
WILFRED OWEN Anthem for Doomed Youth
SIEGFRIED SASSOON How to Die
IVOR GURNEY Bach and the Sentry
SIEGFRIED SASSOON Died of Wounds
FORD MADOX FORD That Exploit of Yours
EDMUND BLUNDEN The Watchers
EDWARD THOMAS Rain
WILFRED OWEN Smile, Smile, Smile
ISAAC ROSENBERG August 1914
RUPERT BROOKE 1914
I Peace
II Safety
III The Dead
IV The Dead
V The Soldier
WILFRED OWEN Mental Cases
SIEGFRIED SASSOON The Death-Bed
IVOR GURNEY The Silent One
ISAAC ROSENBERG Break of Day in the Trenches
EDGELL RICKWORD The Soldier Addresses his Body
HERBERT READ A Short Poem for Armistice Day
WILFRED OWEN Dulce et Decorum est
SIEGFRIED SASSOON Trench Duty
RICHARD ALDINGTON Trench Idyll
EDWARD THOMAS In Memoriam
CHARLOTTE MEW The Cenotaph
SIEGFRIED SASSOON Stretcher Case
EDWARD THOMAS This is No Case of Petty Right or Wrong
ISAAC ROSENBERG Dead Man’s Dump
IVOR GURNEY To His Love
WILFRED OWEN Insensibility
EDMUND BLUNDEN Illusions
EDWARD THOMAS Tears
WILFRED OWEN The Dead-Beat
CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY ‘When you see millions of the mouthless dead’
SIEGFRIED SASSOON Enemies
WILFRED OWEN Greater Love
EDMUND BLUNDEN Reunion in War
FREDERICK MANNING Grotesque
IVOR GURNEY Butchers and Tombs
SIEGFRIED SASSOON A Working Party
WILFRED OWEN Futility
ROBERT GRAVES Recalling War
EDMUND BLUNDEN Trench Raid near Hooge
WILFRED OWEN Disabled
EDWARD THOMAS The Cherry Trees
EDMUND BLUNDEN Report on Experience
MARGARET POSTGATE COLE The Veteran
WILFRED OWEN The Show
SIEGFRIED SASSOON The Redeemer
IVOR GURNEY Strange Service
EDMUND BLUNDEN Third Ypres
EDWARD THOMAS The Owl
SIEGFRIED SASSOON Banishment
WILFRED OWEN Arms and the Boy
EDMUND BLUNDEN Preparations for Victory
IVOR GURNEY Pain
SIEGFRIED SASSOON Repression of War Experience
WILFRED OWEN The Send-off
SIEGFRIED SASSOON Glory of Women
THOMAS HARDY Channel Firing
WILFRED OWEN The Sentry
IVOR GURNEY De Profundis
SIEGFRIED SASSOON Suicide in the Trenches
WILFRED OWEN Strange Meeting
F. S. FLINT Lament
WILFRED OWEN Exposure
SIEGFRIED SASSOON Counter-Attack
IVOR GURNEY Photographs
WILFRED OWEN Spring Offensive
ALICE MEYNELL Summer in England, 1914
SIEGFRIED SASSOON Lamentations
WILFRED OWEN Conscious
IVOR GURNEY To the Prussians of England
SIEGFRIED SASSOON The Hero
EDMUND BLUNDEN The Welcome
WILFRED OWEN Apologia pro Poemate Meo
SIEGFRIED SASSOON Attack
WILFRED OWEN Wild with all Regrets
RICHARD ALDINGTON In the Trenches
WILFRED OWEN The End
SIEGFRIED SASSOON Does it Matter?
MAY WEDDERBURN CANNAN Lamplight
Publisher’s Note
This selection of poetry is intended to be an introduction to the great wealth of First World War poetry, and makes no attempt to be comprehesive. The sequence is random and drawn from several sources, mixing both well-known and less familiar poetry, and is limited to poems written in English. The collection is published to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of Armistice.
Acknowledgements
We are indebted to the copyright holders for permission to reprint certain poems:
RICHARD ALDINGTON: for ‘In the Trenches’ and Trench Idyll’ from The Complete Poems (Allan Wingate, 1948), © Estate of Richard Aldington, to Rosica Colin Ltd; EDMUND BLUNDEN: for ‘Third Ypres’ from Undertones of War (Penguin, 1937), and ‘Preparations for Victory’, ‘Illusions’, ‘Trench Raid near Hooge’, ‘The Welcome’, ‘Reunion in War’, and ‘The Watchers’ from POEMS1914–1930 (Cobden-Sanderson, 1930), to The Peters, Fraser & Dunlop Group Ltd on behalf of the Estate of Edmund Blunden; MAY WED –DERBURN CANNAN: for ‘Lamplight’ from In Wartime (Blackwell, 1917), to James C. Slater; MARGARET POSTGATE COLE: for ‘The Veteran’ from Poems (Allen & Unwin, 1918), to David Higham Associates Ltd; F. S. FLINT: ‘Lament’ from Otherworld/Cadences (Poetry Bookshop, 1920); FORD MADOX FORD: for ‘That Exploit of Yours’ from On Heaven/and Other Poems (Poetry Bookshop, 1918), to David Higham Associates Ltd; ROBERT GRAVES: for ‘Recalling War’ from Collected Poems (Cassell, 1975), to Carcanet Press Ltd; IVOR GURNEY: for ‘Strange Hells’, ‘To His Love’, ‘The Silent One’, ‘Butchers and Tombs’, ‘Strange Service’, ‘Bach and the Sentry’, ‘Pain’, ‘De Profundis’, ‘Photographs’, and ‘To the Prussians of England’ from Collected Poems of Ivor Gurney, edited by P. J. Kavanagh (1982), © Robin Haines, Sole Trustee of the Gurney Estate 1982, to Oxford University Press; THOMAS HARDY: for ‘Channel Firing’ from The Com plete Poems of Thomas Hardy, edited by James Gibson (Mac-millan, 1978), to the publisher; FREDERIC MANNING: for ‘Grotesque’ from Eidola (John Murray, 1917), to the publisher; CHARLOTTE MEW: for ‘The Cenotaph’ from Collected Poems (Carcanet Press, 1982), to the publisher; HERBERT READ: for ‘A Short Poem for Armistice Day’ from Collected Poems (Faber & Faber, 1966; also published by Sinclair-Stevenson), copyright © 1926 by Benedict Read, to David Higham Associates Ltd; EDGELL RICKWORD: for ‘The Soldier Addresses his Body’ from Behind the Eyes: Collected
Poems and Selected Translations (Carcanet Press, 1976), to the publisher; SIEGFRIED SASSOON: for ‘Died of Wounds’, ‘The Hero’, ‘Counter-Attack’, ‘Attack’, ‘How to Die’, ‘Lamentations’, ‘Does it Matter?’, ‘Suicide in the Trenches’, ‘Glory of Women’, ‘Banishment’, ‘The Death-Bed’, ‘Enemies’, ‘The Redeemer’, ‘Repression of War Experience’, ‘Stretcher Case’, ‘Trench Duty’, and A Working Party’ from Collected Poems 1908–1956 (Faber & Faber, 1961), copyright Siegfried Sassoon, to George Sassoon and the Barbara Levy Literary Agency.
In spite of all possible efforts, we have been unable to trace the Estate of F. S. Flint at the time of going to press. The publishers apologize for including his poem without acknowledgement, and would be pleased to hear from the copyright holder, in order to rectify this omission at the earliest opportunity.
JOHN MCCRAE
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
IVOR GURNEY
Strange Hells
There are strange hells within the minds war made
Not so often, not so humiliatingly afraid
As one would have expected – the racket and fear guns made.
One hell the Gloucester soldiers they quite put out:
Their first bombardment, when in combined black shout
Of fury, guns aligned, they ducked lower their heads
And sang with diaphragms fixed beyond all dreads,
That tin and stretched-wire tinkle, that blither of tune:
‘Après la guerre fini’, till hell all had come down,
Twelve-inch, six-inch, and eighteen pounders hammering hel’s thunders.
Where are they now, on state-doles, or showing shop-patterns
Or walking town to town sore in borrowed tatterns
Or begged. Some civic routine one never learns.
The heart burns – but has to keep out of face how heart burns.
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, –
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.
SIEGFRIED SASSOON
How to Die
Dark clouds are smouldering into red
While down the craters morning burns.
The dying soldier shifts his head
To watch the glory that returns;
He lifts his fingers toward the skies
Where holy brightness breaks in flame;
Radiance reflected in his eyes,
And on his lips a whispered name.
You’d think, to hear some people talk,
That lads go West with sobs and curses,
And sullen faces white as chalk,
Hankering for wreaths and tombs and hearses.
But they’ve been taught the way to do it
Like Christian soldiers; not with haste
And shuddering groans; but passing through it
With due regard for decent taste.
IVOR GURNEY
Bach and the Sentry
Watching the dark my spirit rose in flood
On that most dearest Prelude of my delight.
The lowlying mist lifted its hood,
The October stars showed nobly in clear night.
When I return, and to real music-making,
And play that Prelude, how will it happen then?
Shall I feel as I felt, a sentry hardly waking,
With a dull sense of No Man’s Land again?
SIEGFRIED SASSOON
Died of Wounds
His wet white face and miserable eyes
Brought nurses to him more than groans and sighs:
But hoarse and low and rapid rose and fell
His troubled voice: he did the business well.
The ward grew dark; but he was still complaining
And calling out for ‘Dickie’. ‘Curse the Wood!
‘It’s time to go. O Christ, and what’s the good?
‘We’ll never take it, and it’s always raining.’
I wondered where h’ been; then heard him shout,
‘They snipe like hell! O Dickie, don’t go out’…
I fell asleep… Next morning he was dead;
And some Slight Wound lay smiling on the bed.
FORD MADOX FORD
That Exploit of Yours
I meet two soldiers sometimes here in Hell
The one, with a tear in the seat of his red pantaloons
Was stuck by a pitchfork,
Climbing a wall to steal apples.
The second has a seeming silver helmet,
Having died from the fall of his horse on some tram-lines
In Dortmund.
These two
Meeting in the vaulted and vaporous caverns of Hell
Exclaim always in identical tones:
‘I at least have done my duty to Society and the Fatherland!’
It is strange how the cliché prevails…
For I will bet my hat that you who sent me here to Hell
Are saying the selfsame words at this very moment
Concerning that exploit of yours.
EDMUND BLUNDEN
The Watchers
I heard the challenge ‘Who goes there?’
Close-kept but mine through midnight air,
I answered and was recognized
And passed, and kindly thus advised:
‘There’s someone crawlin’ through the grass
By the red ruin, or there was,
And them machine guns been a firin’
All the time the chaps was wirin’,
So sir if you’re goin’ out
You’ll keep your ‘ead well down no doubt.’
When will the stern fine ‘Who goes there?’
Meet me again in midnight air?
And the gruff sentr’ kindness, when
Will kindness have such power again?
It seems as, now I wake and brood,
And know my hour’s decrepitude,
That on some dewy parapet
The sentry’s spirit gazes yet,
Who will not speak with altered tone
When I at last am seen and known.
EDWARD THOMAS
Rain
Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying to-night or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be for what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.
WILFRED OWEN
Smile, Smile, Smile
Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned
Yesterday’s Mail: the casualties (typed small)
And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.
Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned;
For, said the paper, When this war is done
The men’s first instinct will be making homes.
Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes,
It being certain war has just begun.
Peace would do wrong to our undying dead, –
The sons we offered might regret they died
If we got nothing lasting in their stead.
We must be solidly indemnified.
Though all be worthy Victory which all bought,
We rulers sitting in this ancient spot
Would wrong our very selves if we forgot
The greatest glory will be theirs who fought,
Who kept this nation in integrity.
Nation? – The half-limbed readers did not chafe
But smiled at one another curiously
Like secret men who know their secret safe.
This is the thing they know and never speak,
That England one by one had fled to France
(Not many elsewhere now save under France).
Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week,
And people in whose voice real feeling rings
Say: How they smile! The’e happy now, poor things.
ISAAC ROSENBERG
August 1914
What in our lives is burnt
In the fire of this?
The heart’s dear granary?
The much we shall miss?
Three lives hath one life –
Iron, honey, gold.
The gold, the honey gone –
Left is the hard and cold.
Iron are our lives
Molten right through our youth.
A burnt space through ripe fields
A fair mouth’s broken tooth.
RUPERT BROOKE
1914
I Peace
Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,