TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > English > World War I Poets - Edmund Blunden
In comparison to other First World War poets only a small amount of poems written by Blunden during the war have survived. Blunden had a great interest in landscape and most of his war poetry reflected this love. One of them, Thiepval Wood, was written in September1916 when Edmund was twenty years old. In the poem the poet is witnessing a battle and describing the devastating affect warfare can have on nature.
Thiepval Wood
- The tired air groans as the heavies swing over, the river-hollows boom;
- The shell-fountains leap from the swamps, and with wildfire and fume
- The shoulder of the chalkdown convulses.
- Then the jabbering echoes stampede in the slatting wood,
- Ember-black the gibbet trees like bones or thorns protrude
- From the poisonous smoke – past all impulses.
- To them these silvery dews can never again be dear,
- or the blue javelin-flame of the thunderous noons strike fear.
THEMES
This poem illustrates the destructive power war has over man and nature.
The poet sees the wood being in a position as vulnerable as his own. The wood is exposed to the dangers of warfare and can suffer as much as he. Because of this identification the poet gives the wood and the surrounding environment human qualities: the air ‘groans’ and the ‘shoulder’ of the chalk down convulses. (personification)
This shared experience enables the soldier poet to empathise with the wood.
The threat of death brings the soldier and landscape together, letting the soldier express his own fears of being permanently damaged through the experience of the wood.
This allows the reader to realise that the war is pointless and is just harming the nature as well as killing the soldiers
EFFECT OF TIME
The poem was written in September 1916 during the war and therefore the scene the poet creates is very immediate.
This immediacy can be felt through the sensory nature of the poem in the sounds ‘jabbering echoes stampede in the slatting wood’ and smells ‘poisonous smoke’. The use of these words not only give us the sense of actually being there, seeing what the soldiers sees, but they also help us as the reader to identify with the troubles of the landscape as words such as ‘jabbering’ and ‘stampede’ are usually used in connection with humans.
MESSAGE
The poet helps us to see man and nature as one and to realise that as much as man is wounded by war so too is nature.
The landscape described in the poem gives us an idea of the conditions and surroundings the soldiers fought in.
The last three lines of the poem explore the lasting effects of war. The wood has been damaged beyond repair: rain will not restore it and lightening can no longer threaten it. This can be said for the soldiers too, those that are dead are physically beyond repair and those that live have been damaged too deeply and can never return to the way they once were.
Comments
These notes are aimed at A Level English students at A2 level.
Originally written by little one on TSR Forums.
