Poetry was very big back in 1914, don't get me wrong, its still popular now, just poetry was one of the only types of writing you could read! Nowadays we have: books, newspapers, magazines and so on. There were alot famous WW1 poets, but a very famous one was:
Wilfred Owen, he was born on the 18 March 1893, Wilfred Owen was born at Plas Wilmot, a house in Weston Lane, near Oswestry in Shropshire, on 18 March 1893, of mixed English and Welsh ancestry. He was the eldest of four children, his siblings being Harold, Colin, and Mary Millard Owen. He was a soldier and a war poet, his work is admired by people all over the world and still read nearly 100 years on when he wrote his poems, His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare has left effect on people 100 years later. Probably his most famous poem was Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, or translated into English is It is sweet and fitting to die for your country. This is it:
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
This is a poem describing a war situation which maybe Wilfred Owen was in, this is just one of his many traumatic poems, in total he wrote 69 poems. Many of his traumatic and sad poems are influenced by his experiences in war. He fell into a shell hole and suffered concussion; he was blown high into the air by a trench mortar, and spent several days lying out on an embankment in Savy Wood amongst of what he thought was a fellow officer. Soon afterwards, Owen was diagnosed as a suffering shell shock and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh for treatment. Its there that he met a influential man in his poetic career, Siegfried Sassoon, a fellow poet. He returned to service in France on July 1918, Unfortunately Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal, exactly one week (almost to the hour) before the signing of the Armistice, the day the war ended. This was a very unfortunate event as it was so close to the end of the war.
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
This is a poem describing a war situation which maybe Wilfred Owen was in, this is just one of his many traumatic poems, in total he wrote 69 poems. Many of his traumatic and sad poems are influenced by his experiences in war. He fell into a shell hole and suffered concussion; he was blown high into the air by a trench mortar, and spent several days lying out on an embankment in Savy Wood amongst of what he thought was a fellow officer. Soon afterwards, Owen was diagnosed as a suffering shell shock and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh for treatment. Its there that he met a influential man in his poetic career, Siegfried Sassoon, a fellow poet. He returned to service in France on July 1918, Unfortunately Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal, exactly one week (almost to the hour) before the signing of the Armistice, the day the war ended. This was a very unfortunate event as it was so close to the end of the war.
Now on to Siegfried Sassoon, he was a eminent English Poet, writer and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became (along with Wilfred Owen) one of the top WW1 poets. Siegfried Sassoon was born and grew up in neo-gothic mansion in Matfiekd kent. He had a pretty normal childhood, all the way through displaying a love for writing. Motivated by patriotism, Sassoon joined the British Army just as the threat of World War 1 was realised and was in service with the Sussex Yeomanry on the day the United Kingdom declared war, on the 4th of August 1914. But in a riding accident he broke his arm badly and was not in action for Spring 1915 whilst recovering. After he recovered he was sent into the 3rd Battalion, which are the reserves. But unfortunately on November 1st 1915 his younger brother Hamo was killed, it was a horrible experience for him, and to make it worse he was sent (in the same month) to the 1st Battalion in France. It was when Siegfried was in Craiglockhart hospital in Edinburgh that he met a person, someone he would deeply remember in his heart for the next 50 odd years of his life. Siegfried Sassoon's poems are admired even today, he wrote many famous ones, but here's one of his quite famous ones:
For Morn, my dome of blue,
For Meadows, green and gay,
And Birds who love the twilight of the leaves,
Let Jesus keep me joyful when I pray.
For the big Bees that hum
And hide in bells of flowers;
For the winding roads that come
To Evening’s holy door,
May Jesus bring me grateful to his arms,
And guard my innocence for evermore.
He sadly past away on the 1st of September 1967, from stomach cancer.
His and Wilfred's work is still admired today, they have gone down in history as 2 of the best war poets!
For Morn, my dome of blue,
For Meadows, green and gay,
And Birds who love the twilight of the leaves,
Let Jesus keep me joyful when I pray.
For the big Bees that hum
And hide in bells of flowers;
For the winding roads that come
To Evening’s holy door,
May Jesus bring me grateful to his arms,
And guard my innocence for evermore.
He sadly past away on the 1st of September 1967, from stomach cancer.
His and Wilfred's work is still admired today, they have gone down in history as 2 of the best war poets!