A collection of war poems; a collection of thoughts
| May 14, 2012 | Posted by Jane Lu under national, poetry |
Grass, by Carl Sandburg
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work–
I am the grass; I cover all.And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?I am the grass.
Let me work.
I recently visited Belgium and had a chance to visit the graveyards of some of the heroes who sacrificed themselves in the first world war. The first thing that came to my mind was this poem by Carl Sandburg. Indeed, the whole field was covered by grass, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it was like when the world war actually occurred. Do people still visit these graves? Do people still look at the endless rows of the graves and grieve for the loss? Do people still remember the war when they look at all the names on the graves? Do people still keep on looking for the missing bodies in the battlefields or the remains?
In Flanders Fields, by John McCrae
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.
As I stood on the field of grass, all these questions went through my head. From the poem by Carl Sandburg, it seems that all these heroes were long forgotten. But after my visit I deeply feel that people have not forgotten the loss. The British government still plants flowers and cuts the grass around these graves as a show of respect; people are still trying to find those bodies that might still be hidden under layers of earth. On Remembrance Day, we wear poppies – we still grieve, remember, and pay our respect to these soldiers who bravely sacrificed themselves for their country.
V. The Soldier (from the Sonnet Sequence, 1914), by Rupert Brooke
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Perhaps what makes the war so painful is not just the huge amount of sacrifice but the innocence of the volunteering soldiers, who knew nothing of the cruelness of the reality. I remembered seeing a photo of a young soldier in his full uniform in front of his grave, his eyes all hopeful and eager, his head slightly tilted upwards in a proud manner, like a true warrior. The badges and titles he had bravely won glittered on his chest like medals. It was the hopeful glare of the young soldier in that photograph that haunted me. Perhaps so many joined the war because of the ideology of society, given that men who did not join were called cowards, and yet as Wilfred Owen mentioned in his poem:
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.
Here, the Latin “Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori” means “it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.” Indeed, war is definitely not sweet and fitting: it sucks out everything good about a person. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live in fear under the haunting sound of the bombs and the gun shots, nor can I imagine what it would be like to be at the edge of death every day. I’d say we are very lucky to be able to live in a much more peaceful world, where we can at least “keep” our loved ones…
Not To Keep, by Robert Frost
They sent him back to her. The letter came
Saying… And she could have him. And before
She could be sure there was no hidden ill
Under the formal writing, he was in her sight,
Living. They gave him back to her alive
How else? They are not known to send the dead
And not disfigured visibly. His face?
His hands? She had to look, and ask,
“What was it, dear?” And she had given all
And still she had all they had they the lucky!
Wasn’t she glad now? Everything seemed won,
And all the rest for them permissible ease.
She had to ask, “What was it, dear?”“Enough,”
Yet not enough. A bullet through and through,
High in the breast. Nothing but what good care
And medicine and rest, and you a week,
Can cure me of to go again.” The same
Grim giving to do over for them both.
She dared no more than ask him with her eyes
How was it with him for a second trial.
And with his eyes he asked her not to ask.
They had given him back to her, but not to keep.
So, let us never forget…
My Boy Jack, by Rudyard Kipling
“Have you news of my boy Jack?”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind —
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!
… but remember. Remember those who bravely died. Let us not waste the time that we have…
Here Dead We Lie, by AE Houseman
Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.
