The main differences between the poems’ are that Asquith had seen action and Brooke had not and therefore was not exposed to the awful horrors of the war. Hence the poem celebrates war as he had not yet experienced the dreadfulness of it. He died before fighting so we can not count his poem as a reliable source of information to do with the war. The poem is so naïve, “Now, G-D be thanked Who has matched us with his hour, and caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping”. He thinks the war is some kind of fun game and “pie in the sky” so to speak and is optimistic, whereas the realistic truth lies far from this.
Asquith, on the other hand, had seen action and lots of it. Brother Officers had died in the field right next to him. His poem tells the story of a clerk who is bored with his way of life and seeks refuge and change in the war. Even the clerk, who has died in battle feels that his life has been fulfilled as he has fought for what he regarded as a just cause, “And now those waiting dreams are satisfied”, and “his lance is broken but he lies content”.
This lack of realism was reflected in the poetry which came from the front line. This poetry was often used as propaganda as in the case of “The Volunteer”. He - the clerk - has wasted “half his life .... Toiling at ledgers” and has now fulfilled his duty by dying young for his country. All of the early war poetry was filed with these heroic ideals of death for ones country; “If I should die think only this of me .... some corner of some foreign field that is forever England”- expressed through out-moded poetic styles such as the Shakespearean Sonnet to convey the power and intensity of their patriotism. It should also be noted that the second stanza of “The Volunteer” has to be read with the cynicism from a man who has lost friends in the extreme of battle who, perhaps hopes that they have not died for nothing but will go to “join the men of Agincourt”.
Apart from obviously, the poems both concern WW1, there are similarities as well. They both talk about the countries youth at that time. They are bored and need to be “wakened from sleeping”. They also, in similar ways, promote war’s glory, “Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move, and half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary”, and in The Volunteer, “The gleaming eagles of the legions came, And horsemen, charging under phantom skies, Went thundering past beneath the oriflamme.”
Brooke observes the sonnet form (14 lines of iambic pentameter, divided into an octave and sestet), however the octave is rhymed after the Shakespearean/Elizabethan (ababcdcd) rhyme scheme, while the sestet follows the Petrarchan/Italian (efgefg). Brooke has also deviated somewhat from the traditional thematic divisions associated with the octave and sestet: question/predicament and resolution/solution, respectively. The octave begins immediately to herald a great change, and the sestet functions merely to detail it further. Brooke not only bends sonnet rules, he also tacks on an extra syllable to 10 of the 14 lines, while making line 9 (the beginning of the sestet) a full hexameter.
The images in the first four lines: of religious calling, inspired youth, waking with restored strength and refreshed senses, and the swimmer turning (away from filthiness) and diving into sparkling clean water are images of baptism and absolution that belong to the doctrine of "muscular Christianity." Begun and practiced at Rugby where Brooke was born and raised, "muscular Christianity" was a late-Victorian public-school notion of cleansing and test of manhood afforded by getting out of doors and getting in the game. However, Brooke was also looking for a fresh start for himself. He was: “Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary”.
The end of the octave ("And all the little emptiness of love!") is the climax of the sonnet. But with the first line of the sestet, Brooke comes back to his theme of absolution and reinforces the dual meaning of the poem: “Oh, we who have known shame, we have found release there”.
