Compare and Contrast the way in which the poet presents war in 'On the Idle Hill' and 'The Drum' by Mahmoud Elsherif.
Compare and Contrast the way in which the poet presents war in ‘On the Idle Hill’ and ‘The Drum’ by Mahmoud Elsherif.
War, in any shape or form, affects people in many different ways. Many people choose to express their feelings and experiences of war in poems. The two poems I have chosen all have different moods, structures and rhythms but their meaning is all the same- war is ruthless, terrifying and pointless.
The poem ‘On the Idle Hill’ is by A.E. Housman (1859-1936). Housman wrote the poem in 1896 and he was not writing about any particular war but just the horror of battle in general. Housman never partook in any war but heard about the terror of it from other people’s experiences. The first verse portrays a peaceful, happy and a warm scene. Words such as ‘summer’, ‘sleepy’ and ‘streams’ emphasises this. However, the ‘steady drummer’ cuts through this peaceful atmosphere. It is the sound of the army coming, looking for new recruits to go to war with them. The first stanza seems to be about the drum and how it calls people to war and tears them away from their homes. The line; ‘Drumming like a noise in dreams.’ Makes the drum seem like a nightmare, something everyone dreads.