WORLD WAR I POETRY

1. Themes WORLD WAR I POETRY • Patriotism • Heroism • War and Nature • Visions and Dreams

2. In FlandersFieldsby 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 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. Poppy Day (11 November) John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields” became the inspiration for the British Legion’s annual poppy campaign.

3. 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.

4. The War Poets Wilfred Owen Rupert Brooke Isaac Rosenberg Siegfried Sassoon

5. 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.

6. Rupert Brooke • His father was a housemaster at Rugby School. After leaving Cambridge University, Brooke studied in Germany and travelled in Italy. • Brooke suffered a nervous breakdown and in 1913 travelled first to the United States and then on to Tahiti in order to recuperate. Rupert Brooke at King's College Cambridge Taatamata, Brooke's Tahitian lover

7. 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

8. 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)

9. The Soldier (1914) If I should die, think only this of me:That there's some corner of a foreign fieldThat is for ever England. There shall beIn 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 lessGives 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.

10. 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 fieldalliteration 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.

11. 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'.

12. 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.

13. 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 Edinburgh. There he met the poet Siegfried Sassoon. Siegfried Sassoon

14. 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.

15. World War I trenches

16. World War I major military technological innovations Poison gas Aircraft and air warfare The submarine The Machine gun The tank Field telephones

17. Wilfred Owen • 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. The Sambre canal

18. 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 …

19. 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. Dulce Et Decorum Est (Wilfred Owen, 1917)

20. Wilfred Owen _ Dulce Et Decorum Est _ Text analysis Stanza I 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. alliteration 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) simile onomatopoeia

21. 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’ringlike 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. simile onomatopoeia frantic movements 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.

22. 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 poetdescribes the horribledeath of his friend, caused by chemicalwarfare and conveys the message of the poem: thereisnothingnoble or decorous in war, itis a lie. It just meansdegradation and death. Ithasalwaysbeenlikethat, since the earlydays of history. * Horace