A Collection of World War I Poetry

[bunnyboo]

In my first post, several commenters mentioned the poets born out of World War I and quite a bit of Eleventh Month was excerpts from contemporary poetry. I’d like to share a few, along the name of the poet and if they died during their wartime service. These are the complete poems, so I’ve put each one under a read more tag.

 

“Peace” by Rupert Brooke (1887-1915, died of sepsis without ever seeing battle, aged 27)

 

Now, God be thanked who has matched us with his hour,

      And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping!

With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,

      To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,

Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary;

      Leave the sick hearts that honor could not move,

And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,

      And all the little emptiness of love!

Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,

      Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,

            Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;

Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there,

      But only agony, and that has ending;

            And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.

 

“The Soldier” by Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

 

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.

 

 

“Dulce et Decorum est” by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918, killed in action one week before the Armistice was signed, aged 25)

 

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

 

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

 

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

 

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

 

“Insensibility” by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

 

 

                                     I

Happy are men who yet before they are killed

Can let their veins run cold.

Whom no compassion fleers

Or makes their feet

Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.

The front line withers.

But they are troops who fade, not flowers,

For poets’ tearful fooling:

Men, gaps for filling:

Losses, who might have fought

Longer; but no one bothers.

 

                                     II

And some cease feeling

Even themselves or for themselves.

Dullness best solves

The tease and doubt of shelling,

And Chance’s strange arithmetic

Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.

They keep no check on armies’ decimation.

 

                                     III

Happy are these who lose imagination:

They have enough to carry with ammunition.

Their spirit drags no pack.

Their old wounds, save with cold, can not more ache.

Having seen all things red,

Their eyes are rid

Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.

And terror’s first constriction over,

Their hearts remain small-drawn.

Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle

Now long since ironed,

Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.

 

                                     IV

Happy the soldier home, with not a notion

How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,

And many sighs are drained.

Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:

His days are worth forgetting more than not.

He sings along the march

Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,

The long, forlorn, relentless trend

From larger day to huger night.

 

                                     V

We wise, who with a thought besmirch

Blood over all our soul,

How should we see our task

But through his blunt and lashless eyes?

Alive, he is not vital overmuch;

Dying, not mortal overmuch;

Nor sad, nor proud,

Nor curious at all.

He cannot tell

Old men’s placidity from his.

 

                                     VI

But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,

That they should be as stones.

Wretched are they, and mean

With paucity that never was simplicity.

By choice they made themselves immune

To pity and whatever moans in man

Before the last sea and the hapless stars;

Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;

Whatever shares

The eternal reciprocity of tears.

 

 

“The Last Laugh” by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

 

‘O Jesus Christ! I’m hit,’ he said; and died.

Whether he vainly cursed or prayed indeed,

                 The Bullets chirped—In vain, vain, vain!

                 Machine-guns chuckled—Tut-tut! Tut-tut!

                 And the Big Gun guffawed.

 

Another sighed,—‘O Mother,—mother,—Dad!’

Then smiled at nothing, childlike, being dead.

                 And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud

                 Leisurely gestured,—Fool!         

                 And the splinters spat, and tittered.

 

‘My Love!’ one moaned. Love-languid seemed his mood,

Till slowly lowered, his whole face kissed the mud.

                 And the Bayonets’ long teeth grinned;

                 Rabbles of Shells hooted and groaned;

                 And the Gas hissed.

 

 

“To Any Dead Officer” by Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

 

Well, how are things in Heaven? I wish you’d say,

  Because I’d like to know that you’re all right.

Tell me, have you found everlasting day,

  Or been sucked in by everlasting night?

For when I shut my eyes your face shows plain;

  I hear you make some cheery old remark—

I can rebuild you in my brain,

  Though you’ve gone out patrolling in the dark.

 

You hated tours of trenches; you were proud

  Of nothing more than having good years to spend;

Longed to get home and join the careless crowd

  Of chaps who work in peace with Time for friend.

That’s all washed out now. You’re beyond the wire:

  No earthly chance can send you crawling back;

You’ve finished with machine-gun fire—

  Knocked over in a hopeless dud-attack.

 

Somehow I always thought you’d get done in,

  Because you were so desperate keen to live:

You were all out to try and save your skin,

  Well knowing how much the world had got to give.

You joked at shells and talked the usual “shop,”

  Stuck to your dirty job and did it fine:

With “Jesus Christ! when will it stop?

  Three years ... It’s hell unless we break their line.”

 

So when they told me you’d been left for dead

  I wouldn’t believe them, feeling it must be true.

Next week the bloody Roll of Honour said

   “Wounded and missing”—(That’s the thing to do

When lads are left in shell-holes dying slow,

  With nothing but blank sky and wounds that ache,

Moaning for water till they know

  It’s night, and then it’s not worth while to wake!)

 

Good-bye, old lad! Remember me to God,

  And tell Him that our politicians swear

They won’t give in till Prussian Rule’s been trod

  Under the Heel of England ... Are you there? ...

Yes ... and the war won’t end for at least two years;

But we’ve got stacks of men ... I’m blind with tears,

  Staring into the dark. Cheero!

I wish they’d killed you in a decent show.

 

“The Poet As Hero” by Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

 

You've heard me, scornful, harsh, and discontented, 

   Mocking and loathing War: you've asked me why 

Of my old, silly sweetness I've repented— 

   My ecstasies changed to an ugly cry. 

 

You are aware that once I sought the Grail, 

   Riding in armour bright, serene and strong; 

And it was told that through my infant wail 

   There rose immortal semblances of song. 

 

But now I've said good-bye to Galahad, 

   And am no more the knight of dreams and show: 

For lust and senseless hatred make me glad, 

   And my killed friends are with me where I go. 

Wound for red wound I burn to smite their wrongs; 

And there is absolution in my songs.

 

 

“I Have a Rendezvous with Death” by Alan Seeger (1888-1916, mortally wounded and died in no man’s land, aged 28)

 

I have a rendezvous with Death

At some disputed barricade,

When Spring comes back with rustling shade

And apple-blossoms fill the air—

I have a rendezvous with Death

When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

 

It may be he shall take my hand

And lead me into his dark land

And close my eyes and quench my breath—

It may be I shall pass him still.

I have a rendezvous with Death

On some scarred slope of battered hill,

When Spring comes round again this year

And the first meadow-flowers appear.

 

God knows 'twere better to be deep

Pillowed in silk and scented down,

Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,

Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,

Where hushed awakenings are dear ...

But I've a rendezvous with Death

At midnight in some flaming town,

When Spring trips north again this year,

And I to my pledged word am true,

I shall not fail that rendezvous.

 

 

“Champagne, 1914-1915” by Alan Seeger (1888-1916)

 

In the glad revels, in the happy fêtes,

    When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearled

With the sweet wine of France that concentrates

    The sunshine and the beauty of the world,

 

Drink sometimes, you whose footsteps yet may tread

    The undisturbed, delightful paths of Earth,

To those whose blood, in pious duty shed,

    Hallows the soil where that same wine had birth.

 

Here, by devoted comrades laid away,

    Along our lines they slumber where they fell,

Beside the crater at the Ferme d’Alger

    And up the bloody slopes of La Pompelle,

 

And round the city whose cathedral towers

    The enemies of Beauty dared profane,

And in the mat of multicolored flowers

    That clothe the sunny chalk-fields of Champagne.

 

Under the little crosses where they rise

    The soldier rests. Now round him undismayed

The cannon thunders, and at night he lies

    At peace beneath the eternal fusillade ...

 

That other generations might possess—

    From shame and menace free in years to come—

A richer heritage of happiness,

    He marched to that heroic martyrdom.

 

Esteeming less the forfeit that he paid

    Than undishonored that his flag might float

Over the towers of liberty, he made

    His breast the bulwark and his blood the moat.

 

Obscurely sacrificed, his nameless tomb,

    Bare of the sculptor’s art, the poet’s lines,

Summer shall flush with poppy-fields in bloom,

    And Autumn yellow with maturing vines.

 

There the grape-pickers at their harvesting

    Shall lightly tread and load their wicker trays,

Blessing his memory as they toil and sing

    In the slant sunshine of October days ...

 

I love to think that if my blood should be

    So privileged to sink where his has sunk,

I shall not pass from Earth entirely,

    But when the banquet rings, when healths are drunk,

 

And faces that the joys of living fill

    Glow radiant with laughter and good cheer,

In beaming cups some spark of me shall still

    Brim toward the lips that once I held so dear.

 

So shall one coveting no higher plane

    Than nature clothes in color and flesh and tone,

Even from the grave put upward to attain

    The dreams youth cherished and missed and might have known;

 

And that strong need that strove unsatisfied

    Toward earthly beauty in all forms it wore,

Not death itself shall utterly divide

    From the belovèd shapes it thirsted for.

 

Alas, how many an adept for whose arms

    Life held delicious offerings perished here,

How many in the prime of all that charms,

    Crowned with all gifts that conquer and endear!

 

Honor them not so much with tears and flowers,

    But you with whom the sweet fulfilment lies,

Where in the anguish of atrocious hours

    Turned their last thoughts and closed their dying eyes,

 

Rather when music on bright gatherings lays

    Its tender spell, and joy is uppermost,

Be mindful of the men they were, and raise

    Your glasses to them in one silent toast.

 

Drink to them—amorous of dear Earth as well,

    They asked no tribute lovelier than this—

And in the wine that ripened where they fell,

    Oh, frame your lips as though it were a kiss.