In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
This weekend we observed Veterans Day, formerly known as Armistice Day; in England it is called Remembrance Day or Poppy Day. At 11:00 in the morning buglers played “Taps” to mark the end of World War One, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
The war was inexcusable and horrendous, with more than 16,000,000 dead, military and civilian. But as a side issue, it also produced a collective of highly creative poets who wrote movingly about the conflict and experienced it at first hand. Many of these died in action including Wilfrid Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Alan Seeger and Edward Thomas.
In this column and the video that follows, you will have a chance to read and hear performed the stirring verse that came from the pens of these very special poets, some of it written on scraps of paper in the trenches.
* * *
Alan Seeger, born in New York and a member of the French Foreign Legion, had survived almost two years of continuous action before he was mowed down by machine gun fire at the Battle of the Somme. He had predicted his own death in a remarkable poem.
I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.
God knows ’twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear…
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
* * *
Edward Thomas, from a Welsh family, wrote reviews and books about the English countryside until his most cherished friend, Robert Frost, encouraged him to turn to poetry. He inspired Frost to write “The Road Not Taken” and himself became Britain’s most promising young poet.
Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying to-night or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.
Edward Thomas and Robert Frost. Photo Cotswolds Photo LibraryRobert Frost said, “Edward Thomas was the only brother I ever had.” An artillery shell took him away on Easter Monday 1917.
* * *
During the war, two leading poets were on the sidelines militarily but confronted the conflict in their own ways. Thomas Hardy wrote this in 1914, just five weeks after the conflict began.
What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away
Ere the barn-cocks say
Night is growing gray,
Leaving all that here can win us;
What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away?
In our heart of hearts believing
Victory crowns the just,
And that braggarts must
Surely bite the dust,
Press we to the field ungrieving,
In our heart of hearts believing
Victory crowns the just.
Hence the faith and fire within us
Men who march away
Ere the barn-cocks say
Night is growing gray,
Leaving all that here can win us;
Hence the faith and fire within us
Men who march away.
And William Butler Yeats composed one of his finest poems in 1918, shortly before the war ended. He called it “An Irish Airman Foresees his Death.”
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
* * *
Isaac Rosenberg, who was an artist as well as poet, died in the Battle of Arras on the night of April 1, 1918. His “Break of Day in the Trenches” is often considered the greatest poem of the war.
The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet’s poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver—what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe—
Just a little white with the dust.
* * *
Poetry from the trenches was not without some threads of humor, most often sardonic and flecked with ribaldry. Here is a favorite in typical doughboy spelling.
Mademoiselle from Armentières, parley voo,
Mademoiselle from Armentières, parley voo,
You didn’t have to know her long
To know the reason men go wrong,
Hinky, dinky parley voo.
Mademoiselle from Armentières, parley voo,
Mademoiselle from Armentières, parley voo,
She’s the hardest working girl in town.
She makes her living upside down,
Hinky, dinky parley voo.
There are innumerable verses, but the final one carries a ring of truth.
Mademoiselle from Armentières, parley voo,
Mademoiselle from Armentières, parley voo,
Just blow your nose and dry your tears
For we’ll be back in a few short years,
Hinky, dinky, parley voo.
A few short years indeed. In not quite twenty-one years, scarcely a generation, a fresh set of poets resumed fighting in France in a second World War.
* * *
VIDEO. A greatly-undervalued actor, Darren McGavin, joins the First Poetry Quartet in presenting poems by five of the war’s finest writers.
Rupert Brooke . . . . . . “Peace”
Ivor Gurney . . . . . . . . “The Silent One”
Herbert Read . . . . . . “My Company”
Wilfred Owen . . . . . . “Disabled” (excerpt)
Siegfried Sassoon . . . . “Aftermath”
CLICK ON THIS LINK FOR VIDEO: THE MEN WHO MARCHED AWAY
