The WWI Poets
This week, Stephen Voyce made a delightful lecture on the World War I poets. It was nice to be swept away into history and the land where everything seems like stories and not actual history. It was very engaging. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been being a soldier in the trenches. I remember once on a canoe trip I had to trek through mud up to my knees and I kept falling. I got so frustrated I cried the whole way. To be in that for years with people, your friends, dying all around you, is unimaginable. Anyway, moving on (Rushmore) - I wonder how I would have felt about the poets had we not been given a bit of information on them first. For instance, would I have shunned Brooke's poetry? I might have, thinking he was just like the ignorant part of America, or maybe I wouldn't have even understood the poem and therefore not cared. As I read over it now, some things are still unclear to me. I find that I don't understand many of the lines of the poem, but I understand the overall message of wanting to start over new in a world that has become corrupt and conceited.
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,
I understand where Brooke's coming from - I think we could use a good makeover right about now, I just don't think a war is the way to get there. I think the problem is war. And not only literal war, but any kind of war or hate towards each other. However that's another issue. Brooke is a very elegant poet. He has a beautiful way of portraying things. "Oh! we who have known shame, we have found release there, Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending."
John McCrae is a little out of place when it comes to the World War One Poets, but his poem In Flanders Fields is one of the best known poems that emerged from the war. McCrae was a Canadian physician who fought on the Western Front in 1914. He then got transferred to the medical corps in a hospital in France and died from pneumonia in 1918. Maybe he didn't have much experience in combat, but he witnessed the deaths of many because of it.
In Flanders Fields
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.
John McCrae, unlike Brooke and Owen, saw the end of the war. And I think because of this, it has a certain reflectiveness to it. It is not angry like Owen's poems nor patriotic like Brooke's, but reflective and sad. It is a very powerful poem - it makes us face the loss we've encountered and in such a beautiful way -
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.
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,
I understand where Brooke's coming from - I think we could use a good makeover right about now, I just don't think a war is the way to get there. I think the problem is war. And not only literal war, but any kind of war or hate towards each other. However that's another issue. Brooke is a very elegant poet. He has a beautiful way of portraying things. "Oh! we who have known shame, we have found release there, Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending."
John McCrae is a little out of place when it comes to the World War One Poets, but his poem In Flanders Fields is one of the best known poems that emerged from the war. McCrae was a Canadian physician who fought on the Western Front in 1914. He then got transferred to the medical corps in a hospital in France and died from pneumonia in 1918. Maybe he didn't have much experience in combat, but he witnessed the deaths of many because of it.
In Flanders Fields
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.
John McCrae, unlike Brooke and Owen, saw the end of the war. And I think because of this, it has a certain reflectiveness to it. It is not angry like Owen's poems nor patriotic like Brooke's, but reflective and sad. It is a very powerful poem - it makes us face the loss we've encountered and in such a beautiful way -
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.