Nashath Akhtar 10H        

War Poetry

        Poetry is one of the most important ways of communication and expression of feelings. War poetry brings history to life it also shows us the thoughts of men and women who have experienced war. The young people today are impressed by the work of soldier poets of 1914-18. They think this is the most impressive part of the huge literature war.

        Before the end of the nineteenth century there were no soldier poets. The war poets were mostly civilians who used their imagination to say what battle was like. The use of powerful words meant there was a hidden meaning behind it. The writer uses metaphors and similes to express the anguish, fear, love etc in his poems.

        Everyone’s opinion of war changed towards the end of the 1st world war. People thought that sacrificing oneself for their country was seen as being noble and honourable. This put great pressure on the young men to go join the army and to risk their lives. Such poems like this were ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ by Alfred Tennyson and ‘Peace’ by Rupert Brooke. Jessie Pope’s ‘Who’s for the Game’ is a very particularly good example of a poem based on the traditions to encourage men to enlist.

        The poets before the 1st world war were usually civilians who wrote their poems from newspaper reports or other soldiers’ accounts. Some people were taken to war and were paid to write poetry. The poems could have been exaggerated if they were written from the newspaper. The early war poetry was written about heroes and glory. The poems weren’t written on the emotions and feelings of the soldiers but they were written to tell the story of the war. Most of the poems are not descriptive because they are trying to build up the respectability of the important people.

        Poets like Jessie Pope portrayed war as being glorious and honourable, writing poems, which encouraged people to join the army, and as a result Jessie Pope was much disliked by Wilfred Owen and Seigfried Sassoon.

        

        ‘Peace’ by Rupert Brooke is a poem showing the patriotism of war. It talks about his generation being lucky and being able to fight in war,

“ And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping.”

This poem has rhyme to it but the poem does not emphasize what the war was really like. This poem only tells us how heroic and glorious it was to fight in war.

        ‘ The charge of the Light Brigade’ is written by Alfred Tennyson. This poem has a definite rhythm to it and tries to imitate footballers going onto a football pitch. In this poem there are six verses. The first verse is about how six hundred soldiers rode into battle and how they thought there was nothing else to do but die,

“ Their’s but to do and die”.

This shows how people thought that it was honourable to die for one’s country.

        The next two verses describe what it was like, with cannons being shot out from all directions. Phrases like

‘ Volleyed and thundered’ and ‘ shattered and sundered’ have been used to describe this.

        The last two verses describe how the soldiers die,‘ While horse and hero fell’ but Alfred uses the quote ‘ They that fought so well’ to show how brave the soldier was. The last verse talks about how honourable the soldiers were and about what a charge they had made.

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        This poem is all about how brave and honourable the soldiers were and how they died for their country. Tennyson shows his admiration and pity for the soldiers in the last verse as he talks about how brave the soldiers were,

‘ O the wild charge they made’.

Wilfred Owen, the son of a railway worker, was born in Plas Wilmot, near Oswestry, on 18th March 1893. He was a famous poet who wrote poems during the First World War and he was the first poet who tried to change the view people had of war. Some of the poems ...

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