WAR POETS

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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 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.

This poem was written as the First World War broke out in 1914, as part of a series of many
sonnets written by Rupert Brooke. Brooke himself, being predominantly a pre-World War poet, died
the year after “The Soldier” was published. “The Soldier”, being the conclusion and the finale to
Brooke’s ‘1914’ war sonnet series, deals with the Written in fourteen line Petrarchan / Italian
sonnet form, the poem is divided into an opening octave, and then followed by a concluding sestet.
As far as rhyme scheme, the octave is rhymed after the Shakespearean / Elizabethan (abab cdcd)
form, while the sestet follows the Petrarchan / Italian (cde cde) form. The volta, the shift or point of
dramatic change, occurs after the fourth line where Brooke goes from describing the death of the
soldier, to his life accomplishments. This sonnet encompasses the memoirs of a fallen soldier who
declares his patriotism to his homeland by declaring that his sacrifice shall be the eternal
ownership of England, of a small portion of land he has died upon. The poem appears to not follow
the normal purpose of a Petrarchan / Italian sonnet either. It does not truly go into detail about a
predicament/resolution, as is customary with this form; rather, the atmosphere remains constantly
in the blissful state of the English soldier.
The Happy Warrior
by Sir Herbert Read

His wild heart beats with painful sobs,

His strain'd hands clench an ice-cold rifle,
His aching jaws grip a hot parch'd tongue,
His wide eyes search unconsciously.

He cannot shriek.

Bloody saliva
Dribbles down his shapeless jacket.

I saw him stab

And stab again
A well-killed Boche.

This is the happy warrior,

This is he…

Sir Herbert Edward Read was an English poet, anarchist, and critic of literature and art.
Read was born in 1893 in Kirkbymoorside. He studied at the University of Leeds but was interrupted
because WW I broke out during which he served with the Green Howards (British army
division) in France. During his life he wrote many books and poems about war and anarchism. Read
died in 1968.
Interpretation:
Herbert Read’s Happy Warrior is a poem about a soldier who’s fighting in the first World
War. It is written from the perspective of a person who is watching the soldier from a
distance. The soldier is dehydrated and there’s blood coming out of his mouth. The jacket
he’s wearing is in tatters, it is ‘shapeless’. He’s stabbing an already dead German soldier but he’s
anything but happy. At the end the poem is cut off because the person who’s watching stopped
watching or simply moved his head away because he doesn’t want to keep telling what’s happening.
Time Frame:
Happy Warrior was written after World War I. Read gained his inspiration from his
experiences in the war. ‘Happy Warrior’ was in his second poem collection, called ‘Naked
Warriors’ published in 1919
WILFRED EDWARD SALTER OWEN, 1893 - 1918.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST by Wilfred Owen

8 October 1917 - March, 1918

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) 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(4)
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) 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,(11) 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(12)
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13)
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)

Born in Oswestry, Shropshire. Educated at Birkenhead Institute and Shrewsbury Technical

College. From the age of nineteen Owen wanted to be a poet and immersed himself in
poetry, being especially impressed by Keats and Shelley. He wrote almost no poetry of
importance until he saw action in France in 1917. He was a committed Christian and became
lay assistant to the vicar of Dunsden near Reading 1911-1913 - teaching Bible classes and
leading prayer meetings - as well as visiting parishioners and helping in other ways.

From 1913 to 1915 he worked as a language tutor in France. He felt pressured by the
propaganda to become a soldier and volunteered on 21st October 1915. He spent the last
day of 1916 in a tent in France joining the Second Manchesters. He was full of boyish high
spirits at being a soldier.
Within a week he had been transported to the front line in a cattle wagon and was "sleeping"
70 or 80 yards from a heavy gun which fired every minute or so. He was soon wading miles
along trenches two feet deep in water. Within a few days he was experiencing gas attacks
and was horrified by the stench of the rotting dead; his sentry was blinded, his company
then slept out in deep snow and intense frost till the end of January. That month was a
profound shock for him: he now understood the meaning of war. "The people of England
needn't hope. They must agitate," he wrote home. (See his poems The Sentry and
Exposure.)

He escaped bullets until the last week of the war, but he saw a good deal of front-line action:
he was blown up, concussed and suffered shell-shock. At Craiglockhart, the psychiatric
hospital in Edinburgh, he met Siegfried Sassoon who inspired him to develop his war poetry.

He was sent back to the trenches in September, 1918 and in October won the Military Cross
by seizing a German machine-gun and using it to kill a number of Germans.

On 4th November he was shot and killed near the village of Ors. The news of his death
reached his parents home as the Armistice bells were ringing on 11th November

"Dulce et Decorum est"

Summary and analysis for "Dulce et Decorum est"

Summary

The boys are bent over like old beggars carrying sacks, and they curse and cough through
the mud until the "haunting flares" tell them it is time to head toward their rest. As they march
some men are asleep, others limp with bloody feet as they'd lost their boots. All are lame
and blind, extremely tired and deaf to the shells falling behind them.

Suddenly there is gas, and the speaker calls, "Quick, boys!" There is fumbling as they try to
put on their helmets in time. One soldier is still yelling and stumbling about as if he is on fire.
Through the dim "thick green light" the speaker sees him fall like he is drowning.

The drowning man is in the speaker's dreams, always falling, choking.

The speaker says that if you could follow behind that wagon where the soldier's body was
thrown, watching his eyes roll about in his head, see his face "like a devil's sick of sin", hear
his voice gargling frothy blood at every bounce of the wagon, sounding as "obscene as
cancer" and bitter as lingering sores on the tongue, then you, "my friend", would not say with
such passion and conviction to children desirous of glory, "the old lie" of "Dulce et decorum
est".

Analysis

"Dulce et Decorum est" is, without a doubt, one of, if not the most, memorable and
anthologized poems in Owen's oeuvre. Its vibrant imagery and it searing tone make it an
unforgettable excoriation of WWI, and it has found its way into both literature and history
course as a paragon of textual representation of the horrors of WWI. It was written in 1917
while Owen was at Craiglockhart, revised while he was at either Ripon or Scarborough in
1918, and was published posthumously in 1920. One version of it was sent to Susan Owen,
the poet's mother, with the inscription, "Here is a gas poem done yesterday (which is not
private, but not final)." The poem paints a battlefield scene of soldiers trudging along only to
be interrupted by poison gas. One soldier does not get his helmet on in time and is thrown
on the back of the wagon where he coughs and sputters as he dies. The speaker bitterly
and ironically refutes the message espoused by many that war is glorious and it is an honor
to die for one's country.

The poem is a combination of two sonnets, although the spacing between the two is
irregular. It resembles the French ballad structure. The broken sonnet form and the
irregularity reinforce the feeling of otherworldliness; in the first sonnet, Owen narrates the
action in the present, while in the second he looks upon the scene, almost dazed,
contemplative. The rhyme scheme is traditional, and each stanza features two quatrains of
rhymed iambic pentameter with several spondaic substitutions.

"Dulce" is a message of sorts to a poet and civilian propagandist, Jessie Pope, who had
written several jingoistic and enthusiastic poems exhorting young men to join the war effort.
She is the "friend" Owen mentions near the end of his poem. The first draft was dedicated
to her, with a later revision being altered to "a certain Poetess" and the final draft eliminating
a specific reference to her, as Owen wanted his words to apply to a larger audience.

The title of the poem, which is also in the last two lines, is Latin for "It is sweet and right to
die for one's country", or, more informally, "it is an honor to die for one's country". The line
derives from the Roman poet Horace's Ode 3.2. The phrase was commonly used during the
WWI era, and thus would have resonated with Owen's readers. It was also inscribed on the
wall of the chapel of the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst in 1913.

In the first stanza Owen is speaking in first person, putting himself with his fellow soldiers as
they labor through the sludge of the battlefield. He depicts them as old men, as "beggars".
They have lost the semblance of humanity and are reduced to ciphers. They are wearied to
the bone and desensitized to all but their march. In the second stanza the action occurs –
poisonous gas forces the soldiers to put their helmet on. Owen heightens the tension
through one soldier's inability to get his helmet on in time and his falling, "drowning". This is
seen through "the misty panes and the thick green light", and, as the imagery suggests, the
poet sees this in his dreams.

In the fourth stanza Owen takes a step back from the action and uses his poetic voice to
bitterly and incisively criticize those who promulgate going to war as an acceptable and
glorious endeavor. He paints a vivid picture of the dying young soldier, taking pains to limn
just how unnatural it is, how "obscene as cancer". The dying man is an offense to innocence
and purity –his face like a "devil's sick of sin". Owen then says that, if you knew what the
reality of war was like, you would not go about telling children they should enlist. There is
utterly no ambiguity in the poem, and thus it is emblematic of poetry critical of war.
Notes on Dulce et Decorum Est

1. DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by
Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First
World War. They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et
decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it
is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country.

2. Flares - rockets which were sent up to burn with a brilliant glare to light up men and
other targets in the area between the front lines (See illustration, page 118 of Out in the
Dark.)

3. Distant rest - a camp away from the front line where exhausted soldiers might rest for a
few days, or longer

4. Hoots - the noise made by the shells rushing through the air

5. Outstripped - outpaced, the soldiers have struggled beyond the reach of these shells
which are now falling behind them as they struggle away from the scene of battle

6. Five-Nines - 5.9 calibre explosive shells

7. Gas! - poison gas. From the symptoms it would appear to be chlorine or phosgene
gas. The filling of the lungs with fluid had the same effects as when a person drowned

8. Helmets - the early name for gas masks

9. Lime - a white chalky substance which can burn live tissue

10. Panes - the glass in the eyepieces of the gas masks

11. Guttering - Owen probably meant flickering out like a candle or gurgling like water
draining down a gutter, referring to the sounds in the throat of the choking man, or it might
be a sound partly like stuttering and partly like gurgling

12. Cud - normally the regurgitated grass that cows chew usually green and bubbling.
Here a similar looking material was issuing from the soldier's mouth

13. High zest - idealistic enthusiasm, keenly believing in the rightness of the idea

14. ardent - keen

15. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - see note 1 above.
Glory of Women by S. Sassoon

YOU love us when we’re heroes, home on leave,

Or wounded in a mentionable place.
You worship decorations; you believe
That chivalry redeems the war’s disgrace.
5
You make us shells. You listen with delight,
By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.
You crown our distant ardours while we fight,
And mourn our laurelled memories when we’re killed.
You can’t believe that British troops ‘retire’
10
When hell’s last horror breaks them, and they run,
Trampling the terrible corpses—blind with blood.
O German mother dreaming by the fire,
While you are knitting socks to send your son
His face is trodden deeper in the mud.

Siegfried Sassoon was born on September 8, 1886. He was an English poet, author, and
soldier in the British army. He became one of the most popular poets from WWI. Sassoon
enlisted just as the threat of WWI was realized. He broke his arm badly in a riding accident
before leaving England, so he didn't join the war until May 29, 1915. The war changed the
tone of his writing; his early writing was Romantic, but his war poetry exhibited the ugly truths
of war. He wrote about rotting corpses, limbs, cowardice, and the suicide that was found on
the front lines. He was later sent to a War Hospital where he was treated for shell shock.
While at the hospital he met Wilfred Owen, and they became great friends. Both men
returned to active duty in 1918. In July of 1918, Sassoon was once again on the front line
and was immediately wounded again. He was shot in the head by friendly fire. He spent the
remainder of the war in Britain. He helped to bring Owen's poetry to the masses after the
war ended. Sassoon died of stomach cancer on September 1, 1967.

NOTES

This poem accuses British women of gaining vicarious pleasure from the war, and glorying in the
fighting of soldiers abroad.

Glory of Women: ‘Glory’ is a religious word; a divine light that shines from the sacred. Something
glorious is something worthy of honour, or praise— here, this poem purports to write about the
honour or praiseworthiness of women. In this poem, therefore, the ‘Glory of Women’ is considered
ironically.

STRUCTURE: ‘Glory of Women’ is a sonnet. The choice of a sonnet is again ironic— sonnets, of
course, being traditionally associated with love. The poem is not necessarily a traditionally structured
sonnet, however. The ‘volta’, or ‘turn’ of meaning or focus in the poem occurs before the sextet, as
is traditional. There is a turn from detailing what Sassoon takes to be British women’s attitudes
towards soldiering and war to a more savage imagery that shows the women to be deluded. There
is also, unconventionally, an even more pronounced turn that occurs in the final three lines, as the
shocking ending turns from British women to the German mother.
“You love us when we’re heroes…”: from the first, this poem has a confrontational, accusatory tone,
with the direct address of ‘you’ from a notional ‘us’; the voice of a male soldier. The idea of conditional
love here— “when we’re heroes”— is the first sign of an accusation of hypocrisy leveled at women.

“Or wounded in a mentionable place”: the suggestion is that female loyalty depends on the wound
that a soldier sustains, and that it must not be socially embarrassing for women to relate.

“You worship decorations”: the essential superficiality of the feminine viewpoint is suggested by the
idea of worshipping “decorations”— another name for medals.

“you believe / That chivalry redeems the war’s disgrace.”: Sassoon suggests that women romanticise
the war, focusing on “chivalry” and honour. The war, meanwhile, is described as being precisely
dishonorable: it is a “disgrace”.

“You make us shells.”: women, Sassoon suggests, are complicit in the violence, because they are
involved in the manufacture of weapons.

“You listen with delight, / By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.”: the strong rhythm imparted by
the alliteration here— “delight”, “dirt”, “danger”— gives a sense of a compelling parlour narrative.

“You crown our distant ardours…And mourn our laurelled memories…”: the most sarcastic lines in
the poem, employing commonplace, romantic phrases and suggesting this is the limit of women’s
understanding of war. To “crown… distant ardours” means to be the focus of the men’s desires; the
“laurelled memories” talked of are the thoughts of the men killed and victorious (thus presented with
laurel wreaths) in battle. Note the repetition of ‘our’ here; the opposition of men and women is
particularly strongly sustained in these lines.

“You can’t believe that British troops ‘retire’”: The beginning of the ‘sextet’ or final six lines of a sonnet.
The poem turns from romantic images of men prevalent at home to the true actions of men in war.
To ‘retire’, here, is a euphemism for retreat.

“Hell’s last horror… Trampling the terrible corpses— blind with blood”: The alliteration here
accentuates the vicious and desperate retreat of the men. The aspirate ‘h’ sounds recall the heavy
breath of the running men, the harsher ‘t’ sounds the crushing of bones underfoot, while the plosive
‘b’s almost mimics the projection of blood itself.

“O German mother dreaming by the fire…”: the sudden turn to the presentation of a German mother
at home is surprising for the reader, after the focus on the insensitivities and moral complicity of
British women in the war. In some ways she is presented more sympathetically than British women:
her “dreaming”, because not elaborated on, doesn’t seem as immediately corrupt as that of British
women.

“While you are knitting socks… His face is trodden deeper in the mud.”: The final couplet is
deliberately shocking. The contrast between the thoughtful domestic scene and the utter savagery
of a human head being stood on is horrifying, and meant as a corrective to the illusion that dominates
the poem. The brutal truth, Sassoon insists, is a factual corrective to delusion.
Vergissmeinnicht by Keith Douglas-1943
Three weeks gone and the combatants gone
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.

The frowning barrel of his gun

overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.

Look. Here in the gunpit spoil

the dishonoured picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht.
in a copybook gothic script.

We see him almost with content,

abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that's hard and good when he's decayed.

But she would weep to see today

how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.

For here the lover and killer are mingled

who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.

Keith Douglas (January 24, 1920 - June 9, 1944), was an English poet of World War II.

He was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and educated at Christ's Hospital and at the
University of Oxford. He had a difficult childhood, his father deserting the family when
Douglas was at preparatory school and his mother unwell for long periods. In one of his
letters written in 1940 he looks back on his childhood: 'I lived alone during the most fluid and
formative years of my life, and during that time I lived on my imagination, which was so
powerful as to persuade me that the things I imagined would come true'. Within days of the
declaration of war he had reported to an army office with the intention of joining a cavalry
regiment. Like many others keen to serve he had to wait and it was not until July 1940 that
he started his training. On the 1st February 1941 he passed out from Sandhurst, the officer
training school, and was posted to the Second Derbyshire Yeomanry at Ripon. He fought in
North Africa in 1941. In 1944, he took part in the D-Day invasion of Normandy, in the course
of which he was killed.

Imagine a battle, the death of an enemy and then returning later to find the dead body is
decomposing in the sunshine. This is the scene that Keith Douglas, a Second World War
poet writes about in Vergissmeinnicht. It was written in 1943 and the setting is Tunisia.

Tone

The narrator, a soldier, speaks in a matter of fact tone about his enemy. When he describes
how Steffi will be saddened because of the loss of her boyfriend, he seems to soften a little,
but then balances this with the grotesque images of decay.

Structure

In this poem, Keith Douglas does use rhyming words, but the scheme used varies in each
of the six verses. It is like a ballad with its jaunty rhythm and its tragic subject matter of the
loss of a life and the lost love.

Summary

In this poem, the speaker uses “we” this shows that the group he is with a group and they
are all in this together. This shows solidarity amongst the men. Although it is three weeks
after the fighting that took place, the German soldier is still decaying in the sunshine. This
area is described as “nightmare ground” and soon the speaker reveals why when he
describes the horror of what he sees.

The tone then becomes accusatory when he talks about gunfire.

“he hit my tank with one

Like the entry of a demon.” (stanza 2, lines 3 and 4)

The reference to the devil is showing the reader that the narrator had to defend himself. The
third verse then draws the reader into the scene because he gives an image of the reader
pointing at what he can see he says,

“Look. Here in the gunpit spoil

The dishonoured picture of his girl.” (Stanza 3, lines 1 and 2)

The photo of his girlfriend is spoilt like their relationship. The fact that the girl is named and
he writes “Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht” makes it more personal. She is someone who has said,
“Forget me not,” but the roles will be reversed and she will be the one who will be unable to
forget she lost her boyfriend in battle.

Yet there is the contrast between the fragility of human flesh and the strength of the weapons
that kill. The narrator says,
“Mocked at by his own equipment

That’s hard and good when he’s decayed.” (Stanza 4, lines 3 and 4)

This theme is continued into the fifth verse when the speaker writes in detail about the state
of the soldier’s skin, his eyes and stomach. The macabre imagery would have been a feature
of everyday life in the middle of battle. The final part of the poem is reflective as it considers
the loss people feel during a war. A fatalistic view is given in the final stanza as death is to
blame and had the “soldier singled” but it isn’t just the soldier who has suffered, but the lover
who will continue to suffer.

What is particularly interesting about the poem that the soldier’s dispassionate tone reflects
qualities necessary for his survival. It is a poem that is harsh, but ironically allows the reader
to reflect and form their own ideas about the situation.

In Vergissmeinnicht by Keith Douglas, the speaker is a soldier- most likely in World War II
due to the dead German soldier mentioned in the poem. The speaker is returning to the
scene of a battle after 3 weeks. There is no fighting at the scene this time, however the body
of an enemy soldier, whom attacked the speaker and was then killed, is present. The first
two stanzas don\'t allow for any humanity to be seen in the enemy soldier. The middle two
stanzas introduce the aspect of his life outside of being an enemy, through the picture of the
soldiers love with \"Vergissmeinnicht\" (forget me not), written on it. Yet, the stanzas
continue to disregard his humanity because of his role as a combatent against the speaker
and his companions. There is a shift within the last two stanzas that address the second
aspect of the dead soldier, his role as a lover to the woman in this picture.
The rhyme scheme changes throughout the poem, never keeping with the same pattern for
even two stanzas in a row. The second to last stanza, where the major shift in tone occurs,
does not even contain rhyming within it and draws more attention to the shift as a result.
Douglas uses a lot of alliteration throughout Vergissmeinnicht. A larger emphasis is placed
on phrases such as soldier singled, skin the swart, and solider sprawling through the
repetition of the \'s\' sound in the beginning of each word. All of the phrases containing
alliteration are revolving around the actual death of the enemy soldier. This has an effect of
placing much more importance on the dead body of the solider then the life it lived before
hand.
In reading this poem by Keith Douglas, I did not feel as though the speaker felt sorry for the
dead solider, or even sympathetic to the soldier\'s lover. The final stanza seemed much
more matter-of-fact than emotional, just stating how being a soldier took away the possibility
of being a lover for the dead man. However, I think the lack of emotion was necessary for
this poem to seem as though the speaker truly experienced this situation, because as a
soldier he had to kill the man in order to survive.