Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    World War One British Poets: Brooke, Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg and Others
    World War One British Poets: Brooke, Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg and Others
    World War One British Poets: Brooke, Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg and Others
    Ebook139 pages1 hour

    World War One British Poets: Brooke, Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg and Others

    By Dover Publications

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Ironically, the horrors of World War One produced a splendid flowering of British verse as young poets, many of them combatants, confronted their own morality, the death of dear friends, the loss of innocence, the failure of civilization, and the madness of war itself.
    This volume contains a rich selection of poems from that time by Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, and others known especially for their war poetry — as well as poems by such major poets as Robert Graves, Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, Robert Bridges, and Rudyard Kipling.
    Included among a wealth of memorable verses are Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier," Wilfred Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth," "In the Pink" by Siegfried Sassoon, "In Flanders Fields" by Lieut. Col. McCrae, Robert Bridges' "To the United States of America," Thomas Hardy's "In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations,'" as well as works by Walter de la Mare, May Wedderburn Cannan, Ivor Gurney, Alice Meynell, and Edward Thomas.
    Moving and powerful, this carefully chosen collection offers today's readers an excellent overview of the brutal range of verse produced as poets responded to the carnage on the fields of Belgium and France.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateMar 5, 2012
    ISBN9780486113234
    World War One British Poets: Brooke, Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg and Others

    Related to World War One British Poets

    Related ebooks

    Wars & Military For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      By Water Beneath The Walls

      Aug 5, 2021

      By Water Beneath The Walls
      1 min read

    • Article

      Reframed: The Woman In The Window Review – All Eyes On Her Indoors

      May 8, 2022

      There is a staggering vision in this exhibition of a woman’s head pressed against the bars of a window, her beautiful face enduring and forlorn. She is carved from a block of medieval limestone. The sculpture irresistibly calls upon your desire to br

      3 min read

    • Article

      Napoleon’s Downfall

      Apr 15, 2021

      Napoleon’s Downfall
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Inevitable Peace

      Mar 26, 2020

      The Inevitable Peace
      5 min read

    • Article

      Somme Song

      Feb 12, 2019

      Somme Song
      3 min read

    • Article

      Lost In Translation?

      Jul 11, 2023

      Lost In Translation?
      6 min read

    • Article

      The King Of Westminster

      May 24, 2023

      The King Of Westminster
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Soldier

      Nov 10, 2021

      The Soldier
      2 min read

    • Article

      Human Litter And Evil Devices

      Jul 11, 2023

      Human Litter And Evil Devices
      6 min read

    • Article

      Forever England

      May 5, 2021

      Forever England
      5 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Jan 19, 2023

      While I agree with Fern Riddell that we shouldn’t treat audiences of historical dramas as stupid (The Conversation, Christmas), most people in any audience are not as well-versed in the subject as the programme-makers. Period dramas such as The Crown

      4 min read

    • Article

      Wartime Diarist

      May 8, 2018

      Wartime Diarist
      7 min read

    • Article

      Hurrah For The Wavy Navy

      Mar 9, 2022

      Hurrah For The Wavy Navy
      5 min read

    • Article

      To A Skylark

      Jul 14, 2021

      To A Skylark
      6 min read

    • Article

      Also in November 1760

      Oct 1, 2020

      3rd Frederick II’s Prussian forces defeat the Austrian army commanded by Count Leopold Joseph von Daun at the Battle of Torgau in Saxony. For both sides, the battle proves one of the costliest of the Seven Years’ War, with 16,670 Prussian and 15,897

      1 min read

    • Article

      Over The Top

      Jun 20, 2019

      Joakim: “The Battle of Flers-Courcelette in 1916 was the first time tanks were used in war. There were 32 British tanks – Mark I, or ‘Mother’. There should have been more, but some of them broke down. The Great War marked the end of ‘old’ warfare and

      4 min read

    • Article

      World Wars In Colour

      Jun 18, 2020

      World Wars In Colour
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Sound of Silence

      Nov 1, 2022

      In an impassioned speech delivered at the United Nations in 1958, the great cellist Pablo Casals proclaimed his belief in the universality of music. Music, he argued, was the one artistic form of expression that ‘transcends language, politics and nat

      6 min read

    Reviews for World War One British Poets

    4.5/5

    32 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A small, but representative selection of poems by some of the great WWI poets (Sassoon, Owen, Graves, Brooke). While reading [Regeneration], I realized that I had never read a poem by Siegfried Sassoon and I found that a lack, so I pulled this slim volume off the shelf to read. It's amazing to me that I can read all I have been reading about WWI, and yet some of these poems made it more alive than anything else I've read. The power of poetry...
    • 4/5
      The First World War was immortalized by poets – some who were active participants, and others who waited while sons, husbands, friends, or lovers went to war. This brief collection is a representative sample of war poems by British authors, including a couple of women. The brief biographical sketch that precedes the work of each poet let me know instantly whether or not that poet survived the war. It is frustrating that a few of the bios mention poems that are not included in this collection. Possibly those poems are still under copyright and could not be included in the collection. (Dover seems to keep its prices low by republishing material in the public domain.)Only a couple of poems were familiar to me before I read the collection: “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...) and “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae. Of the new to me poems in the collection, the one that will linger most is “The Next War” by Robert Graves. I found it eerily prescient on this side of World War II:You young friskies who todayJump and fight in Father's hayWith bows and arrows and wooden spears,Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers,Happy though these hours you spend,Have they warned you how games end?...

    Book preview

    World War One British Poets - Dover Publications

    RUPERT BROOKE (1887—1915)

    Rupert Brooke, born in 1887, was educated at Rugby School and later at King’s College, Cambridge. Perhaps more than any other of the war poets, Brooke came to represent the magnitude of England’s sacrifice for what was popularly believed a just cause. Brooke was young, beautiful and gifted; that he wrote poetry justifying the war effort — and that he was killed in the early years of the war — contributed to his myth.

    Because he died so young (he was 28 when he died of blood poisoning shortly before the Gallipoli expedition), Brooke’s poetry assumed a greater place in English literature than it might have had he lived longer. Prior to the war, he contributed to Edward Marsh’s volumes of Georgian Poetry, celebrating the English countryside and way of life. He had early on been influenced by the decadent Romanticism of the late nineteenth century, and while at Cambridge, he fell under the influence of the seventeenth-century metaphysical poets. His first volume of poems, Poems, 1911, was well received and in 1914 he published 1914 Sonnets, ensuring his reputation as one of England’s rising young poets.

    Brooke enlisted shortly after England declared war against Germany on August 4, 1914, and turned his poetic efforts to his experiences as a soldier. The most famous of these was the five-sonnet group comprising The Soldier, and in particular the sonnet of the same name. Not long after Brooke wrote the poem, the Dean of St. Paul’s cathedral in London read it on Easter Sunday, 1915. It was reprinted in the London Times and caused an immediate sensation. The poem’s initial reception was magnified by Brooke’s own death soon after. His words, If I should die, think only this of me:/ That there’s some corner of a foreign field/ That is forever England, are some of the best remembered of the war’s poetry.

    I. PEACE

    Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,

    And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,

    With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,

    To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,

    Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,

    Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,

    And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,

    And all the little emptiness of love!

    Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,

    Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,

    Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;

    Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there

    But only agony, and that has ending;

    And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.

    II. SAFETY

    Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest

    He who has found our hid security,

    Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest,

    And heard our word, ‘Who is so safe as we?’

    We have found safety with all things undying,

    The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,

    The deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying,

    And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth.

    We have built a house that is not for Time’s throwing.

    We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever.

    War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,

    Secretly armed against all death’s endeavour;

    Safe though all safety’s lost; safe where men fall;

    And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.

    III. THE DEAD

    Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!

    There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old,

    But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.

    These laid the world away; poured out the red

    Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be

    Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,

    That men call age; and those who would have been,

    Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

    Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,

    Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.

    Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,

    And paid his subjects with a royal wage;

    And Nobleness walks in our ways again;

    And we have come into our heritage.

    IV. THE DEAD

    These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,

    Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.

    The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,

    And sunset, and the colours of the earth.

    These had seen movement, and heard music; known

    Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;

    Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;

    Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

    There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter

    And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,

    Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance

    And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white

    Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,

    A width, a shining peace, under the night.

    V. THE SOLDIER

    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

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1