Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!-An ecstasy of fumblingīut someone still was yelling out and stumblingĪnd flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.-ĭim through the misty panes and thick green light,Īs under a green sea, I saw him drowning. All went lame all blind ĭrunk with fatigue deaf even to the hoots
Many had lost their boots,īut limped on, blood-shod. Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,Īnd towards our distant rest began to trudge. Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, In the wake of colossal destruction, Larkin looks back with devastatingly sharp hindsight at the doomed notion that war would be akin to "an August Bank Holiday lark" for those about to fight.īent double, like old beggars under sacks, The poem was written in 1964, when some critical distance from both wars had been reached. Larkin's heartbreakingly poignant poem reflects on the patriotic optimism of the young men queueing up to enlist in 1914. Thomas was killed in action at Arras on Easter Monday, April 1917. Adlestrop is a haunting portrait of the quiet calm of England, in contrast to the horrific fighting taking place abroad, as remembered by Thomas when his train made a stop in the Cotswolds just before war broke out in 1914. Though not much of his poetry deals explicitly with war, the war is often referred to obliquely. Adlestrop by Edward ThomasĮdward Thomas chose to enlist in the Artists Rifles in 1915.
The years to come seemed waste of breath, The most famous lines from his poem The Soldier are often read in remembrance of those who die far from home fighting for their country, suggesting that soldiers take a part of their home nation with them to the grave. Here are 10 poems for the fallen to read this Remembrance Day weekend: The Soldier by Rupert Brookeĭuring the First World War, Brooke joined the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, and died of an infection in 1915 en route to Gallipoli. Thomas Hardy's Drummer Hodge immortalises the young British boys who died in the Anglo-Boer War, but also proves that poetry written for a particular moment can take on a timeless resonance. The reality of the Great War, in particular, was reflected in words of poets who gave their lives in service, such as Owen and John McRae, while the sacrifice of their generation is cast in a new light in the tributes of later writers, such as Philip Larkin, whose moving poem MCMXIV captures the fragile innocence and peace in the days before the war. Often, it is the poetry that comes from conflict that allows us truly to understand what Wilfred Owen called "the pity of war," and contemplate the terrible loss of life it entails. We turn to poetry in those moments when ordinary language seems inadequate.
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