The people who were not involved in the war were still excited about it. It was when the soldiers started to come back to Britain with ‘blighty wounds’ (injuries that resulted in the person coming back), that people realised that there was something wrong. The war was only meant to last four months in which the men were supposed to enjoy the benefits of trench life. Instead the fun died down and the pressure of the end and survival grew upon them. Famous poets, and in fact ordinary privates, started to write the second period of war poems: experience.
One renowned poet was Wilfred Owen. Dulce Et Decorum Est, one of his most famous poems, describes the struggle of a group of people who have to struggle through the most extraordinary events every day. At the end of the poem a phrase is stated: “Dulce et Decorum est pro patri mori”. In English is it translated as: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. If someone is reading the poem for the first time and learns of the English meaning of the title before reading the poem they may feel it is a poem that represents the army in a good way. How this assumption is further from the truth. It is a mockery of Jessie Popes poem, “Who’s for the Game”, in which she describes war as being a merry affair. This shows that the end of the expectation phase has been completely over ridden by the actual experience of the war. The poets had changed their views to those they had in their early visions. They now began to tell of the horrific reality on the Western Front instead of being totally patriotic. People began to see a far more honest picture painted of the conditions for the soldiers. Gone are the romantic images of springtime, sunshine and new beginnings. Now we have poems such as “Exposure” by Wilfred Owen, talking openly and of the cold, the wet and the misery of trench life.
The poem speaks about the feelings of someone who has recently reached the front line for the first time. Owen uses alliteration "Merciless iced east winds" to create coldness, making us feel the "iced" winds with the sound of the words. At the end of each stanza Owen deliberately adds short lines that don't rhyme with anything, giving the reader a taste of the anticipation the soldiers felt in the trenches while expecting something to happen but again "Nothing happens".
The last stanza tells of the weather being the murderer of many soldiers in the trenches while they were waiting to go into battle. In these horrific conditions men were stuck in trenches for weeks, defending their country, and even though many died, it seemed unimportant for still the poem finishes on "But nothing happened".
By 1917 the real essence of the pitiful situation being suffered by the troops was becoming more and more clear in the poetic works. In his free verse “Lost in France”, Ernest Rhys spent the first eleven lines setting the reader up with a description of the attributes of a ploughman. He told that “He could see a crow three miles away” and that “He could make a gate, and dig a pit,” All of this leads the reader to expect just about anything but the last line. This is thrown at us in a devastating way, immediately dragging us back from this picture that has been so skilfully painted: “And he is dead” No amount of bravery and skill could have saved this man in the filthy trenches of France. Rhys wants you to know that he died, as so many others did, needlessly and without commotion.
In “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, Owen writes about the relation between soldiers and cattle waiting to die. He again uses alliteration to great effect, “Only the stuttering rifles rapid rattle” mimics the returning bolt on the machine guns in a very graphic way. He also lays the pity of these men dying, firmly down.
“No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;”
He obviously felt very strongly that here were men dying and nobody was doing a thing to try to stop it. The second to last stage had begun: the poetry of protest.
Owen was more concerned with the tragic waste of life in war than the actual poetry itself. He makes us aware of what these men could have achieved if they had only lived. This point is strongly expressed in his poem "Strange Meeting". The feeling of hopelessness led several of the poets to write bitter statements against the war. Siegfried Sassoon was in Britain with a M.P who tried hard to convert the majority of the government to the idea that a negotiated peace was the best idea, but they did not convert, yet this made a deep impression on Sassoon who now felt a desire to share his view on the way the war was being fought.
In Sassoon's poem "Does It Matter?" there is an absolute bitterness in the way soldiers were treated in the war. It begins by asking a question "Does it matter?" it follows by saying "Losing your legs?" for he uses a sarcastic tone to the poem making the readers aware that no one cares if these men lost their legs, their eyesight, their lives, as long as they fought for our country, people will always be kind to them. The poem is crude, but direct, so he gets his point across to the readers in an effective way . The poem is written in three stanzas with a regular rhyming pattern in each stanza that reflects the other stanzas. It is written in total pity and respect for the soldiers.
Owen's poem "Inspection" spells out the irony of war proclaiming that it is not our own human race causing this destruction but it is our God who we all love and respect, taking all his young men back for his inspection in the sky, therefore it is of a good cause, for "The race will bear Field-Marshal God's inspection". Owen uses this type of irony because the war was wiping out all our youth that he declares as "The world is washing out its stains". This poem is the bitter declaration on the waste, indignity and lost of the youthful men and Owen declares this in an unintelligent way so that it comes across ridiculous or hateful to his readers. There is a neat contrast between what he seems to say, and the effect that he intends to have on his readers. This seems to appear a lot in the "bitter satire" of his work.
The last type of war poetry is that of refection. Poems written by Sassoon at the start of the First World War contrast greatly in style to his later work. Driven by anger and frustration of the inhumanity of the war, Sassoon developed a beautiful style in which to describe the horror and appalling nature of the ongoing conflict. Sassoon continued to stir the emotions and consciences of his countrymen long after the guns fell silent. One of his most expressive pieces of his later work is called Aftermath. Sassoon wanted to stress the importance of remembering the lost men who fought for their country. The first two lines of poem read:
”Have you forgotten yet?
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days”.
The dream of a better world, which fuelled the great revolutionary wave in the aftermath of the war, had much to do with what had been suffered by many in the trenches. Sassoon is worried that the memory of this might be lost to future generations:
'But the past is just the same--and War's a bloody game...
Have you forgotten yet?
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.”
The First World War did bring about many changes- socially, politically and technologically. As well as this, 1914-1918 saw a complete change in the style and structure of poetry. The strictness of rhythm and rhyme were cast aside in favour of more accessible and straightforward forms as the war progressed. The language became more colloquial. These ideas and many oh coupled with the free verse style of Rosenberg finally freed the poet from the earlier restraints and allowed them to more easily express their feelings and to the public.
Word Count: 1756