“one day I stood eminent
and I saw you gather’d round me
uplooking
and about you a radiance that seemed to beat
with variant glow and to give
grace to our unity.”
The use of epithets such as “radiance” and “glow” suggest understanding and a platonic love between the men and their company commander. This idea is prevalent in “Birdsong” by Sebastian Faulks as Stephen “was appalled at the idea of being separated from his men. He despised the war but he wanted to see how it would all end.” The poet conveys his emotion at the loss of his men within the company through his use of exclamatives: “God!” and the repetition of “O”. These heighten the reader’s awareness of the despair and pain within the poem whilst also drawing the reader further into the poem. The repetition of the word “someday”: “someday in the loneliest wilderness” and “someday my heart will cry” suggests that time is no longer important to the poet and the use of the first person pronoun, “my”, “I’ll” conveys a sense that the poet is alone as all his men are “deceased and devoid”. This is presented in the poem through the use of a rhetorical question, “O beautiful men, O men I loved / O whither are you gone, my company?” Susan Hill in her novel “Strange Meeting” acknowledges the true extent of the war through the words “so many pointless, mess, inglorious deaths”.
The poet communicates images of death and the horrors of war through the strong use of imagery and connotations of religion. A sense of exhaustion and horror is presented through phrases such as “wearily…through the area of death.” There are strong similarities between this image and an image presented by Isaac Rosenberg in “Returning We Hear the Larks” in which the men find themselves “Dragging their anguished limbs” across a “poison-blasted track”. Images of extreme weariness and death are presented throughout the literature of the Great War period and this is further enhanced by the threat of danger yet a realisation that there is nothing that can be done in order to prevent death, “When a flare curves through the sky / they rest immobile.” This realisation highlights the poet’s anguish as the tone changes from that of toil and hard work to that of anger. This change in tone is emphasised by the poet’s use of religious imagery, “My men, my modern Christs / your bloody agony confronts the world.” The pain and “agony” of such an image draws the reader into a sense of both guilt and pride for what Vera Brittain described as the “brave young men” who performed acts of heroism on a daily basis for the sake of their country and for the generations to come.
The poet’s irregular use of form suggests a sense of confusion and this is supported by the change in tense of the poem from the poet remembering what the men had been like to the present and then to the idea of “fate” and what is both happening now to the poet and to the men themselves. By manipulating the tenses the poet is able to provide the reader with an overview of what happened and the relationship between the company this intensifies the sense of friendship between the men and the idea that “They are all of one species.” The different perspectives at the end of the poem convey the idea that death is inevitable but unpredictable and Read’s use of natural imagery suggests beauty and nature can form from death, “They distantly gather like a dark cloud of birds / in the autumn sky.”
The poet seems resigned in his belief that death is a fact of life and that “Urged by some unanimous / volition of fate / Clouds clash in opposition: / The sky quivers, the dead descend; / earth yawns.” The natural images present the idea of the souls going up to heaven but the bodies “descend” as Wilfred Owen describes that not many young men are left in England “save under France”. Herbert Read, through his poetry acknowledges the themes of death and the horrors of war that are such strong characterstics of Great War Literature. Vera Brittain’s thoughts further highlight the emptiness and the futility of war that has been depicted through many poets and writers alike: “It is impossible to look with any satisfaction on the thought of 25,000 Germans being left to mutilation and decay; the destruction of men as though beasts whether they be English, German or anything else seems a crime against the whole of civilisation.” It is perhaps Herbert Read’s final image that has the greatest significance for today’s generation and this is expressed through the words, “Your entire soul is standing up in my body.” Today one would think of Laurence Binyon and the words he wrote in 1914, “We will remember them.” Herbert Read’s intention would appear to be to live his mens’ lives through his own and to never let them be forgotten.
