Poems of the Great War Read online

  Poems of the Great War 1914 – 1918

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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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

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  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

  CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY Two Sonnets

  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, –

  The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

  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
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  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,