WORLD WAR I

POETRY
Themes

• Patriotism
• Heroism
• War and Nature
• Visions and
Dreams
 In Flanders Fields
by Major John McCrae (Canadian military doctor and artillery commander )
May 1915
• 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 Poppy Day (11 November)
The torch; be yours to hold it high! John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders
If ye break faith with us who die Fields” became the inspiration for the
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow British Legion’s annual poppy
campaign.
In Flanders fields.
 Poppy Day

• Remembrance Day (sometimes known informally

as Poppy Day) is a memorial day (11 November)
observed in the Commonwealth since the end of
the First World War to recall the end of hostilities
of World War I on that date in 1918.
• Hostilities formally ended at the 11th hour of the
11th day of the 11th month, in accordance
with the armistice signed by representatives of
Germany and the Entente. The First World War
officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of
Versailles on 28 June 1919.
 The War Poets
Wilfred Owen
Rupert Brooke

Isaac Rosenberg
Siegfried Sassoon
 Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915)

• Born on 3 August 1887

at Rugby.
• His neo-Romantic poems
and premature death in
World War One
contributed to his fame
and idealised image.
 Rupert Brooke

• His father was a housemaster

at Rugby School. After leaving
Cambridge University, Brooke
studied in Germany and
travelled in Italy. Rupert Brooke at
King's College
• Brooke suffered a nervous Cambridge
breakdown and in 1913
travelled first to the United
States and then on to Tahiti in
order to recuperate.
Taatamata, Brooke's
Tahitian lover
 Rupert Brooke
• He returned home shortly before the outbreak of World
War One and volunteered for the Royal Navy in 1914.
• In February 1915, he set sail for the Dardanelles, en route
to Gallipoli. On board ship he developed septicaemia from
a mosquito bite on the lip.
• He died on 23 April 1915 on a hospital ship off the Greek
island of Skyros and was buried in an olive grove on the
island.
Brooke’s original grave
in Skyros
Rupert Brooke

• Brooke's war experience consisted of one day of limited

military action during the evacuation of Antwerp.
• His entire reputation as a war poet rests on one poem and
five "war sonnets”.
• Although The Soldier is the most famous of these poems,
Brooke's favourite was The Dead (IV)

Poems 1914
Poem :The Treasure
War Sonnet I: Peace
War Sonnet II: Safety
War Sonnet III: The Dead
War Sonnet IV: The Dead
War Sonnet V: The Soldier
 The Soldier (1914)

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.
Rupert Brooke _ The Soldier _ Text analysis

Stanza I If I should die, think only this of me:

That there's some corner of a foreign field
alliteration is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed.
personification A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
reference to death A body of England's breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
The poem takes the form of the Petrarchan sonnet and deals with
patriotic ideals. In the first stanza (the octave of the sonnet), the poet is
speaking to the English people. He doesn’t seem afraid of death. He
thinks that his grave will be in a foreign field and his dead body will
enrich the soil by becoming dust.
He talks about how his grave will be England herself, and what it
should remind the listeners of England when they see the grave. He
views England as a mother who gave him life and stresses the beauty
of its landscape.
Stanza II And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
metonymy 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.
In the second stanza, the sestet, he talks about this death
(sacrifice for England) as redemption; he will become “a
pulse in the eternal mind” *. He concludes that only life
will be the appropriate thing to give to his great motherland
in return for all the beautiful and the great things she has
given to him, and made him what he is. The soldier-speaker
of the poem seeks to find redemption through sacrifice in the
name of the country.
*Brooke was a Greek scholar at Cambridge and his central thought turns on the
idea of cosmic memory (mnemosyne) in which he will be 'a pulse in the eternal
mind'.
 Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

• Owen is the most famous of all the war

poets.
• He succeeded in portraying the reality of
the war - the boredom, the helplessness,
the horror and above all, the futility of it.
• He came from Shropshire and studied
agriculture in London and Reading.
• After school he became a teaching
assistant and in 1913 went to France for
two years to work as a language tutor.
 Wilfred Owen
• He was 21 when the war broke
out. He was not horrified or
elated by the outbreak of war.
• During 1914, he became more
aware of the human sacrifice
involved and was filled with
confusion.
• He was accepted by the army
in 1915 and left for the western
front early in January 1917.
• After experiencing heavy fighting,
he was diagnosed with shellshock.
He was evacuated to England and
arrived at a War Hospital near Siegfried Sassoon
Edinburgh. There he met the poet
Siegfried Sassoon.
 Wilfred Owen

• He began a close friendship and literary partnership with

Sassoon and his most famous poems were written from
this time until he left the hospital.

• Owen re-lived his most traumatic memories every night

through the form of obsessive nightmares. Under
Sassoon's direction, he began to write about these
memories in poetry.

• His poems recreated the

miserable conditions and
constant stress with which
the soldiers lived: the mud,
rats, barbed wire, lice, fleas,
corpses, blood and constant
shelling.
World War I trenches
 World War I major military technological innovations

Poison gas The submarine Aircraft and air warfare

The Machine gun

The tank
Field telephones
Wilfred Owen

The Sambre canal

• Owen returned to France in August 1918 and in October

was awarded the Military Cross for bravery for capturing a
German machine gun. He never received it as he was
killed early on 4th November 1918, seven days before the
armistice, while attempting to lead his men across the
Sambre canal at Ors.
 Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen is buried in Ors
Communal Cemetery
In 1920, Sassoon edited and
published Owen's single volume
of poems which contain some
of the most poignant English
poetry of World War One.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Anthem For Doomed Youth
Disabled
1914
Asleep
Exposure
Mental Cases
…
 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.
Dulce Et Decorum Est
(Wilfred Owen, 1917) 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.
Wilfred Owen _ Dulce Et Decorum Est _ Text analysis
Stanza I

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

alliteration
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
simile And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
onomatopoeia 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.

The soldiers are retreating towards the trenches. They are

tired, scared; they cough and are made blind as a result of
the gas of the shells. Their physical suffering is conveyed
by the words: bent double (1), knock-kneed, coughing (2),
lame, blind (6) drunk with fatigue, deaf (7)
Wilfred Owen _ Dulce Et Decorum Est _ Text analysis
Stanza II - III
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…
simile
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
onomatopoeia As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

frantic movements
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

The poet describes a gas attack. The men try to put on

their masks, in the green light, but the poet’s friend is
wounded and can’t wear the mask in time.

The sight of the dying friend returns in the poet’s

nightmares.
Wilfred Owen _ Dulce Et Decorum Est _ Text analysis
Stanza IV

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 simile
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 (main point, message of the poem)
Pro patria mori. *

The poet describes the horrible death of his friend, caused by chemical
warfare and conveys the message of the poem: there is nothing noble or
decorous in war, it is a lie. It just means degradation and death. It has
always been like that, since the early days of history.
* Horace
 Rupert Brooke Wilfred Owen

The soldier’s mood Romantic Disenchanted

His attitude to war He idealized it He condemned it

Imagery Drawn from nature and Nightmarish

joy

The poet’s message Dying at war brings War and patriotism are
glory deceitful