War+Poetry

=War Poetry =



Information on World War I [|How it began][|Conditions in the trenches][|Public Attitudes] [|Trench warfare] The War Poets:[|The poets]

#|Powerpoint on Trench warfare:

Key poems studied in this unit:

I knew a simple soldier boy  Who grinned at life in empty joy,  Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,  And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum, With crumps and lice and lack of rum, He put a bullet through his brain. No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Sneak #|home and pray you'll never know <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The hell where youth and laughter go. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[|**//Siegfried Sassoon//**] **//1917//**

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Aftermath**
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//Have you forgotten yet?...//

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days, <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Like traffic checked a while at the crossing of city ways: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go, <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//But the past is just the same—and War's a bloody game...// <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//Have you forgotten yet?...// <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.//

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz— <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets? <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Do you remember the rats; and the stench <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench— <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain? <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?' <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Do you remember that hour of din before the attack— <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men? <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">With dying eyes and lolling heads—those ashen-gray <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//Have you forgotten yet?...// <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//Look up, and swear by the slain of the war that you'll never forget!// <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Siegfried Sassoon March 1919**

**[[image:http://www.wilfredowen.org.uk/files/Wilfred_BioPage.jpg align="left"]]Anthem for Doomed Youth**
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstruous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now 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 good-byes. 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. [|**Wilfred Owen**]

=The Next War=

You young friskies who today Jump and fight in Father's hay With bows and arrows and wooden spears, Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers, Happy though these hours you spend, Have they warned you how #|games end? Boys, from the first time you prod And thrust with spears of curtain-rod, From the first time you tear and slash Your long-bows from the garden ash, Or fit your shaft with a blue jay feather, Binding the split tops together, From that same hour by fate you're bound As champions of this stony ground, Loyal and true in everything, To serve your Army and your King, Prepared to starve and sweat and die Under some fierce foreign sky, If only to keep safe those joys That belong to British boys, To keep young Prussians from the soft Scented hay of father's loft, And stop young Slavs from cutting bows And bendy spears from Welsh hedgerows. Another War soon gets begun, A dirtier, a more glorious one; Then, boys, you'll have to play, all in; It's the cruellest team will #|win. So hold your nose against the stink And never stop too long to think. Wars don't change except in name; The next one must go just the same, And new foul tricks unguessed before Will win and justify this War. Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage Once more with pomp and greed and rage; Courtly ministers will stop At home and fight to the last drop; By the million men will die In some new horrible agony; And children here will thrust and poke, Shoot and die, and laugh at the joke, With bows and arrows and wooden spears, Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[|**Robert Graves**]


 * George Orwell on war:**

[|All Quiet on the Western Front] [|Gallipoli]
 * Recommended Viewing:**