The volunteer was another poem written to make men sign up for the war. It was written by Herbert Asquith, about a man who all his life had a boring job until he went away to fight for his country. Although he died all his dreams are now complete as he has died with honour and he will go to join the great soldiers of the past.
As the course of the war went on the attitude of the poets changed. They no longer encouraged young men to go and fight for their country instead they began to show the realities of trench warfare.
Robert Graves poem a dead boche was a poem that would put anyone off the war. It says that war’s hell and says that what he say would be a certain cure for lust of blood. He describes how he say a dead German solider in the woods and describes the image well use good word and fraises like “he scowled and stunk” “with clothes and face a sodden green” and “dripping black blood from his nose and beard”
many other poets and soldiers started to follow this style of poetry and that's when the real truth about what war was really like started to come out.
disabled was a poem written by Wilfred Owen one of the wars most famous poets. It is about a young man who signed up for the army and came back disabled with no arms or legs. It says how he just sits there waiting for the dark because then nobody can see him. It also says how he will never feel how slim girls waists are or how warm their subtle hands are as now they all just touch him like some queer disease. There was once a time when he enjoyed a blood smear down his leg after playing football. There is some sarcasm in the poem like he joined because someone said he would look good in a kilt but now he has no legs and could never wear a kilt again. The poem finishes, “how cold and late it is! Why don't they come and put him to bed? Why don't they come?” Because he has nothing better to do.
One of the most powerful poems I have read from the First World War is cannon-fodder by Alec Waugh. It is about a soldier who died fighting in the war. The poem describes in a lot of detail how he lies there with the lice in his hair and the worms banqueting on his flesh. It describes how all his family and friends will be sitting at home thinking of him and knitting him socks unstill they told that he is dead and although they might think life is unbearable without him they will never have to see him the way the poet did. All rotting with such a foul smell around him. The poet says that he envies the broken hearted mother who will remember him as he was the last time she seen him happy, strong and able.
by the End off the war poetry written for the war was virtually no more. With poems becoming more graphic and showed more true feeling than any other poems ever have been.