A Comparison of the two poems, 'The Isles of Scilly' and 'At the British War Cemetery, Bayeux'
A Comparison of the two poems, ‘The Isles of Scilly’ and ‘At the British War Cemetery, Bayeux’ The two poems express grieving for the dead, and both use similar language in some respects in their use of metaphors and language and are very emotional in their content in order to convey the feeling of grief for the large numbers of dead appropriately. Curiously, for two such emotional poems, they both bear very nonchalant and almost clinical titles, both simply naming the place that the poem is about which clearly in no way indicates the emotional content of the poem, seemingly fulfilling no real purpose other than to be strangely ironic. In At the British war cemetery, Bayeux, Charles Causley writes about the ‘five thousand’ dead, buried at the cemetery that the title indicates. The poem has a very ordered structure echoing the structured and orderly lines upon lines of graves and gravestones at a war cemetery supported later by referring to the dead as in ‘geometry’ of sleep. Grigson’s poem, however, is much less straightforward and uses a combination of enjambment and a general feeling of unorderliness in his layout of the poem to convey the feeling of untidiness about the weatherworn and shipwreck-scattered shores of the Scilly Isles. Causley writes in first person, speaking, presumably as himself about his experience at the war cemetery in Bayeux. It has clearly had a profound impact on him and makes sure that he is writing about the dead themselves, referring to the graves as not just graves but ‘their…graves’. He suggests that he feels guilty walking among them as a living person, because he has got life while they
have not. He considers life as a possession that one can own and even give as a gift if he so wanted. In a biblical reference, he compares himself to Jesus walking among the five thousand, (which is, of course the number of dead he claims are buried there at the start of the poem) and holds the bread and fish from them in ‘iron hands’. He is unable to distribute his gift, life, as Jesus was able to distribute the bread and fish among the five thousand in the bible, and he feels guilt for this. He notices that ...
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have not. He considers life as a possession that one can own and even give as a gift if he so wanted. In a biblical reference, he compares himself to Jesus walking among the five thousand, (which is, of course the number of dead he claims are buried there at the start of the poem) and holds the bread and fish from them in ‘iron hands’. He is unable to distribute his gift, life, as Jesus was able to distribute the bread and fish among the five thousand in the bible, and he feels guilt for this. He notices that the graves are under fir and chestnut trees, as well as being among lavender and marguerite; both typically English plants which ‘forge’ for him a sky which he considers to be English as beneath it everything is so English in essence. The feeling that when he speaks, he is addressing the dead themselves is confirmed when he asks them to ‘turn now’ and rise to read their ‘rank of snow’ on their own tombstone, referring to the graves’ snow-like appearance on the ground when viewing such a large number of the smart white tombstones. Before leaving, the idea of his apparent guilt for having what the dead have not is revived when in the penultimate stanza he asks directly if he can bring them a gift before he leaves. In an imagined dialogue they answer, and ask him to first take that which they don’t need; the oak and laurel, both symbols of triumph and victory, since victory is of no use to them when they are dead. In order to transform it into a gift, they instruct him also to take their ‘fortune’ of tears, implying the huge suffering which they went through, and to use all their ‘gifts’ to live well and in happiness like a ‘spendthrift lover’. They do not seem unaware of what we see as the ‘heroic’ thing that they did in dying for their cause and for triumph; but by giving away the gifts, especially the symbols of victory, Causley imagines them as no longer interested in what they have achieved other than knowing it will help others, and are only concerned with regaining life, which of course they know is impossible. They ask of the poet ‘the only gift you cannot give’; they both know it is impossible for him to give them back the life that they have lost but which he possesses, and the realisation of this is understandably saddening for the poet, and so he has made it the dead who ask for the life, who through empathy, understand that he cannot give it, rather than making it seem as if he were able to offer it but would not, through selfishness. The Isles of Scilly, although similar in its general theme to Causley’s poem, sets about creating the mourning for the dead through pathetic fallacy and symbols for the feelings and emotions, rather than using a human to describe mourning for the dead directly. He paints a very sombre picture of the Isles, which for him represent the ‘dead hope’ of the deceased who, unlike those in Causley’s have not achieved their aim through death; rather they were sailing from Europe for a new life in America but were killed on the notoriously shipwreck-scattered coasts of the Isles of Scilly whereas the dead in Bayeux, although not meaning to die, collectively achieved their aim, and for that there is some hope left in the poem. Using strong imagery from the start, he implies that the sea is red, stained, metaphorically speaking, with the blood of the dead, who now ironically lie ‘safely’ near the shore below the megaliths, symbolic of civilisation, which must have once existed on the island. Grigson, throughout the poem uses the colour red to symbolise death through the colour of blood and not necessarily by directly referring to the colour itself, but also through things which are red, and so this theme is repeated through the images we complete in our minds. On one of the Islands, Samson, where he sets the poem, he sees the debris left by decades of wrecked ships and likens it to ‘hearths’, a word used to represent the centre and heart of the house, in this case ruined on the seashore, where hopes ‘flickered’ like fire, helps to convey the fact that the hopes were short lived and soon extinguished. The ‘soot’, the evidence and remains of these hopes; has been mostly removed by ‘gale and rain and spray’; the weather also contributing to the imagery to convey the harsh and inhospitable nature of the Islands; infamous for their mercurial changes of weather extremes. Despite the sometimes inhospitable nature of the islands, they are lush with plant life, albeit not native to the islands; the ‘unfamiliar’ pink lilies grow for the foreign dead, as well as red flowered and red wooded gums and ratas, once again adding to the blood-red imagery that runs throughout the poem. He also notices gulls and wild rabbits, yet not even these escape justification; both are black, seen as in mourning for the dead, for nothing it seems on the island is there if not to grieve the departed. Juxtaposed to the more positive imagery of the flora and fauna, the theme of death in the poem is presented as the image of the ‘sand-rubbed’ skull of a dolphin, and a more disgusting one of ‘rotting human eyes’ in the seaweed. Cleverly, he does not say he has seen such a thing, only that he considers if such eyes exist, having died during a storm at night, they would never have seen the ‘safety’ of the daytime, or any of the positive things which the island does possess; gulls, ‘cobalt sea’ and ‘holly’, ironically symbolic of safety and protection, in the drift. After all, as he perceives all these as being in mourning for the dead, it would not be right for someone to see their own memorial. Below these trees lies the broken figurehead from a wrecked ship, her eyes ‘dry’, he knows that she is unable to cry for those lost but attributes pathetic fallacy to he all the same. As the night draws in with its ‘destroying fear’, the island is transformed into the storm-plagued island which causes this destruction, looked upon by the rising moon which ‘cannot care’. This notion that the moon is noticeably the only thing not mourning for the dead implies the comparative insignificance to anything so distant of the shattered hopes and lost lives that the remains on the island represent to him, and that he has so carefully written about. Where Causley consoles himself in his belief that the dead understood his predicament through empathy, Grigson finds similar comfort in believing that when he sees something that for him reminds him of the dead, it is there for that very reason, and that the human feelings which he ascribes to inanimate and unintelligent objects which have survived on the island while those aboard the ships did not, is deliberate. He views the Islands themselves and everything that is on them as the memorial to the dead, where Causley considers the memorial of the dead in his poem to be not such a physical thing, but the legacy of the victory which they died to achieve, and the resulting freedom that such a triumph brought about.
