The Trench Poets of WWI

Is war necessary?  Some would say that it is.  When a country attacks a smaller country for the purpose of enslaving its citizens or taking its wealth, then it becomes an imperative for that country to fight back to defend itself.  When is war right?  When is it wrong?  Have you thought about what you would do if America were to go to war?

Wilfred Owen--1893-1918

Click on "search" to go to a page for Wilfred Owen. When you do that, you will have an opportunity to go to even more pages about this young poet. You might also want to investigate World War I in general. Use search to do that. You will find some great pages.

"The poetry is in the pity," Wilfred Owen once said.  Owen died in WWI at the age of twenty-five, but during his short life he wrote some of the most important poetry about World War I.  Owen modeled much of his work from his literary hero, John Keats and also was influenced by French Modernist poets.  But neither of these two influences would have as much impact on his work as the trenches of the first World War.  Much poetry had been written about war that idealized the battles and the deaths into flag-waving triumphs and glory.  Owen's poetry replaced that idealism with gritty and grim reality of young men dying in sludge, choking on poison gas.  He is right.  The poetry is in the pity, and one cannot read his poems without feeling some of the pain and panic of the men who died, far too young, on the foreign battlefields of World War I.  My grandfather was a chaplain during WWI.  I hope that he was able to help some of the young men that Owen writes about.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped 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.
 

GREATER LOVE

Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce love they bear
Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft,--
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,--
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear,
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

Heart, you were never hot
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.

Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Sassoon was at the opposite end of the social scale from his friend, Wilfred Owen.  Sassoon had been born into English aristocracy and privilege and was educated in England's finest universities.  When WWI broke out, Sassoon enlisted in the army and distinguished himself as an officer.   Within a short time, however, his attitude about the war changed as a result of the brutality he witnessed in the trenches.  Besides writing some of the most bitter antiwar poems of the period, he made public statements calling the war "a war of aggression and conquest."  Instead of being 
court-martialed as he expected, he was diagnosed as "shell-shocked" and sent to a hospital.  It was while in the hospital that he met Wilfred Owen.  The two would remain friends for the rest of Owen's life.  Here are two of his poems.  Read also the ones in your text.   All are worth your time and effort.

Suicide in the Trenches

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,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

Does It Matter

Does it matter?  losing your legs?
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their  muffins and eggs.

Does it matter?  losing your sight?
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter?  those dreams from the pit?
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you're mad,
For they'll know you've fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.

John McCrae (1872-1918)

John McCrae is remembered for having written one of the most popular poems from World War I.  He was a Canadian physician and fought on the Western Front in 1914.  He was transferred to the medical corps and was assigned to a French hospital.  While on active duty in 1918, he died of pneumonia.  Here is his most famous poem.

This next poem has a different attitude from the previous ones. If someone has to fight and die, then they should be given honor and respect. But also the battle must be continued so that the deaths of the brave dead are not in vain.

In Flanders Fields
by John McCrae

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.

And now read this poem--a totally different attitude about war. An attitude that seems totally discredited by the harsh and ugly realities of World War I.

The Soldier
by Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever 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.