“Fall in” written by Harold begbie is written to make the reader feel ashamed about not taking part in the war, it was very popular it was put on posters and it was even sang to music. The poem has an ABABCDCD rhyming pattern which keeps the poem going, the poem suggest that the readers life will lack if the don’t participate in the war. The poet is always reminding the reader of how he would be letting the country down if not to help. It also uses the line “a girl who cuts you dead” implying that the girls are only interested in men who are brave and are going to war. There is also a line which says “when your children yet to be clamour to learn what part you took”. Meaning when your children ask you to tell stories about the war, you won’t be able to tell any because you never took part and they may think of you as a coward. The poem also implies that when you are old you won’t be able to join in the old war stories others are telling because you never took part. In the last verse the writer say when you are old and your friends and family talk bout the war, will you sit with “your old head shamed and bent? Or say- I was the not the first to go, but I went thank god, I went?” It means would you rather shy away from the fact that you didn’t go to war and keep your head down, or hold you head high and say I went to war and helped my country. I wasn’t one of the firsts to go, but I went and GOD will respect me for that. Throughout the poem there is a lot of repetition of words and phrases, at the beginning of each verse it says for example “How will you fare sonny, How will you fare” this is to give impact to the line. Overall I believe that the poem is very good at making people feel guilty, and pushing them too sign up to go to war.
“The Two Mothers” is written by Matilda Bethem-Edwards, the poem is about a mother whose son has died at war and a mother whose son’s did not go to war. The first mother is crying, while the other is ashamed that not one of three sons went to war, the meaning of the poem is that every loving mother, would rather have all her son’s here with her and alive, rather than them being killed at war. The poem uses old English “Yon” I think the reason she uses these words is because she thinks the war will be something that will go down in history. Also like most of the recruitment poems, the author uses statements which imply that the reader should look after “their country” for example. “The nation pride” making the reader feel, as though he should risk his life for his country. The poem also has an ABAB rhyming pattern and also in the poem there is a rhetorical question “like mine who lately fought and died?” This gets the reader thinking about the verse even after they’ve read it; this poem is very emotional and would leave a big impact on the reader.
Trench poems were the real stories behind the war, the soldiers wrote down their true feelings often horrific and disturbing. Many of the soldiers were bitter and twisted and they wrote almost in a different language at times, using slang and Modern English. Other than proper English used in the recruitment poems. There were many trench poets but two of the more famous were Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, the poets met at Craiglockheart hospital in Scotland, while being treated for shell shock. They had seen the real truth behind the war, both suffering from mental trauma.
The first poem I am going to write about is “Dulce et decorum est” written by Wilfred Owen, this is one of the most famous poems of all the trench poems written in the wartime. The title of the poem means “It is sweet and meet to die for one’s country. Sweet and decorous!” The poems rhyme pattern is ABABCDCD. The poem is about soldier’s and the traumatic death’s they have seen whilst “fighting for their country”, in the first verse the soldiers are leaving the trenches after duty, to rest. It says “men marched asleep” saying they are so tired they can sleep on their feet, the writer also compares them to “old beggars”, “knock-kneed” and “coughing like hags”. This poem is very graphic and the words he uses are too stun the reader, for example “guttering”, “froth-corrupted” and “blood-shod” to name a few. In the next verse the writer talks about a gas bomb exploding he explains it as a “thick green light, as under a green sea”. Then he writes “I saw him drowning” he explains how it feels to be useless and unable to help the man who’s dying next to him, but he then goes on to speak about death as if it happens all the time. In the next verse he talks of disturbing task of having to throw the dead mans body on to the back of a wagon almost without a care. “And watch the white eyes writhing in his face” during the poem Owen uses lots of similes, he also says “his hanging face, like devil’s sick of sin” saying the sins are the deaths he has caused. Later the writer uses revolting similes with “obscene as cancer, bitter as cud of vile”. At the end of the poem he writes “the old lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” which I think means it’s a lie that it is “sweet and meet to die for one’s country. Sweet and decorous!”
The final poem I am going to write about is titled “Anthem for Doomed Youth” written by Wilfred Owen, with the help of Siegfried Sassoon. The poems rhyme pattern is ABABCDCDEFFEGG; the poem is about the funerals of the soldiers on the front line. He compares “the pall” to the pale face of a girl who has just learned of the death of her loved one, “each slow dusk” is compared to drawing blinds as a mark of respect for the death of a loved one. The “flowers” are compared to the tired soldiers, I think the writer believes that the just having a usually funeral service for the brave soldiers is not enough, after all the trauma they went through as he says “no mockeries now for them”. He uses alliteration and the language is of high standard as if it is aimed at the people behind the war, those with authority to show them the trauma the soldiers went through. I think that this poem was written to show the reader how many people’s deaths were almost just pushed under the carpet and left and not paid the respect they deserved.
Overall I believe that recruitment poems were written without full knowledge of how extreme the war would become, encouraging men to take part without knowing what they were going into. Thinking it would be brave and courageous to fight for their country, and getting there and finding it’s a completely different story. As trench poems confirm, they tell the horrors of war and the trauma the soldiers went through. The recruitment poems were quite hypocritical because the writers were the ones who sat back and let the men who thought they were being brave and courageous go off and fight a war they persuaded them to go. So to be honest the only poems that tell the full truth are the trench poems that were written from the trenches where the real horrors took place.