Revision:World War I Poetry and Prose - Themes

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Religion

'God' By Rosenberg - "Ah! This miasma of a rotting God!"

'The Redeemer' By Sassoon - "I say that he was Christ"

'Christ in Flanders' By Lucy Whitmell - "We never thought of You much in England"

'To the memory of Sir Henry Ellis who fell at Waterloo' By Felicia Hemans - "avenging angels"

'The Conscript' By Wilfred Gibson - "nail-marks glowing in his feet and hands"

'Marching Men' By Marjorie Pickthall - "they supped the sacrament of death"

'August 1918' By Maurice Baring - "Angel of Death his wings has spread"

The Home Front

'Glory of Women' By Sassoon - "You can't believe that British troops retire"

'War Girls' By Jessie Pope - "the girl who clips your ticket"

'Women at Munitions Making' By Mary Collins - "their fingers coarsened in munitions factories"

'The Marionettes' By Walter de la Mare - "hoots- angel-wise-"the Cause!""

'Youth in Arms II: Soldier' By Harold Monro - "(Thought! Thought go back into your kennel again)"

Military Hierarchy

'The General' By Sassoon - "incompetent swine"

'The Chances' By Owen - "over the top tomorrer; boys we're for it"

'Journeys End' By Sherriff - The Colonel's orders for the raid

'Banishment' By Sassoon - "mutinous I cried to those who sent them"

'My Company' By Herbert Read - "share their doom"

'In Memoriam' By EA Mackintosh - "I had fifty sons" "My men trusted me"

'Base Details' By Sassoon - "I'd toddle safely home and die- in bed"

The Enemy

'The Immortals' By Rosenberg - "still they rose to torture me"

'Birdsong' By Faulks - "He laid his head against Levi's chest and sobbed"

'Beyond the Pale' By Robert Venede - "ravening brutes"

'For All We Have and Are' By Kipling - "The Hun is at the gate!"

'To Germany' By Charles Sorley - "We'll grasp firm hands"

'Winter Warfare' By Edgell Rickword - "Hauptman Kaulte, Colonel Cold"

'Serenade' By Gurney - "the guns equal"

Landscape

'Grass' By Sandburg - "I am the grass; I cover all"

'There will come soft rains' By Sara Teasdale - "Robins will wear their feathery fire"

'The Fields of Flanders' By Edith Nesbit - "fields were glad and gay" "fields are trampled and brown"

'All the hills and vales along' By Charles Sorley - "earth will surely store all gladness that you pour"

'Song of the Dark Ages' By Francis Brett Young - "scar the plain"

'In the Trenches' By Richard Aldington - "Each wounds on the breast of earth"

'The Sower' By Laurence Binyon - "Earth, that restores tenfold"

'War' By Lesley Coulson - "Soft stems of summer grass shall wave again"

'Birdsong' By Faulks - "So much muscle and blood in the earth"

Trench Life

'Counter-Attack' By Sassoon - "pallid, unshaved and thirsty"

'Louse Hunting' By Rosenberg - "Nudes, stark and glistening, yelling in lurid glee"

'Exposure' By Owen - "war alsts, rain soaks and clouds sag"

'The Romancing Poet' By Helen Hamilton - "the blood, the filth, the horrors"

'Dead Mans Dump' By Rosenberg - "shells go crying"

'The Last Post' By Graves - "in the gas and smoke and roar of guns"

'Trench Poets' By Edgell Rickworth - "rats ate his thumbs"

'Journeys End' By Sherriff - "You think there is no limit to what a man can bear?" (Stanhope)

Heroism

'The Call' By Robert Venede - "stand by the heroes' side"

'For All We Have and Are' By Kipling - "iron sacrifice of body, will and soul"

'In Barracks' By Sassoon - "Young Fusiliers, strong-legged and bold"

'Fragment' By Brooke - 'Pride in their strength"

Love and Friendship

'An Ice Cream War' By William Boyd - "bodies had mingled" (Felix and Charis)

'Birdsong' By Sebastian Faulks - Isabelle "chokes with passion" for Stephen

'Journeys End' By Sherriff - Stanhope buries his feelings in "laughter" when Osbourne dies

'Servitude' By Brooke - "love of comrades sweetens all"

'Banishment' By Sassoon - "They smote my heart to pity"

'Apologia Pro Poemate Meo' By Owen - "These men are worth your tears. You are not worth their merriment"

'My Company' By Herbert Read - "I've seen him kiss a dying man"

'The Accrington Pals' By Peter Whelan - "that's what soldierings about... comradeship"

Motif of the Poppy

'Break of Day in the Trenches' By Rosenberg - "poppies whose roots are in man's veins"

'In Flanders Field' By John McCrae - "the poppies blow"

'In the Trenches' By Rosenberg - "See trench floor poppies strewn"

'Vlamertinghe: Passing the Chateau, July 1917' By Blunden - "poppies by the million"

Comments

These notes are aimed at A Level English students at A2 level.

Originally written by Cooksie5 on TSR Forums.