This
year is the centennial (or centenary, as the British say) of the beginning of
World War I, the group collectively known as the World War I poets has been
receiving some well-deserved attention. In fact, the war itself has been
receiving enormous attention, from the art installation of almost 900,000 ceramic red poppies at the Tower of London
to an outstanding exhibition at the Imperial
War Museum.
The
poets wrote about the war in a way no one else really could. Some of them died
on the battlefield, others died from illnesses like pneumonia, and still others
survived to go on with literary and publishing careers. They capture our
collective imagination for their youth, their hopes, and their experiences, as
much as for the words they wrote.
Sixteen
of the poets were memorialized with a stone in the Poet’s
Corner of Westminster Abbey in 1985; I saw it when we visited the Abbey in
2012. The 16 are Richard Adlington, Lawrence Binyon, Edmund Blunden, Rupert
Brooke, Wilfrid Gibson, Robert Graves, Julian Grenfell, Ivor Gurney, David
Jones, Robert Nichols, Wilfred Owen, Herbert Read, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried
Sassoon, Charles Sorley, and Edward Thomas.
Many
if not all of them are represented into two small collections of World War I
poetry. One is so small it fits in the palm of my hand; the other is a
beautiful little edition from The Collector’s
Library.
The
small volume (the one pictured in my hand in the photograph above) is Poems
of the Great War by Christopher Navratil, published by Running Press
Miniature Editions. Navratil includes a number of the most famous poems, noting
that of the hundreds of thousands of poem published with the war, only a few
hundred have endured.
One
of those that have endured (and is included in the volume) is “When I’m Killed”
by Robert Graves:
When I'm killed, don't think of me
Buried
there in Cambrin Wood,
Nor as
in Zion think of me
With
the Intolerable Good.
And
there's one thing that I know well,
I'm
damned if I'll be damned to Hell!
So
when I'm killed, don't wait for me,
Walking
the dim corridor;
In
Heaven or Hell, don't wait for me,
Or you
must wait for evermore.
You'll
find me buried, living-dead
In
these verses that you've read.
So
when I'm killed, don't mourn for me,
Shot,
poor lad, so bold and young,
Killed
and gone--don't mourn for me.
On
your lips my life is hung:
O
friends and lovers, you can save
Your
playfellow from the grave.
(Graves survived the war, going on to write
novels, essays, criticism, and much more.)
It is a small volume, but a somber one, providing
a window into the tragedy that the allies called a victory.
Collector’s Library has published Poetry
of the First World War, edited by Marcus Clapham, an editor, publisher
and anthologist of more than a dozen volumes. I have a weakness for fine
volumes with gilt edging. This edition has artist Paul Nash’s painting “The
View of Passchendaele” for its cover illustration; the original is in the
Imperial War Museum.
Beyond it’s physical beauty, the volume includes
both well-known and lesser-known poems, and poems by a number of non-combatants
like John Masefield, A.E. Housman and Thomas Hardy. I especially liked this one,
“The Owl,” by Edward Thomas (who died in 1917):
Downhill
I came, hungry, and yet not starved;
Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof
Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest
Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.
Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest,
Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I.
All of the night was quite barred out except
An owl's cry, a most melancholy cry
Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,
No merry note, nor cause of merriment,
But one telling me plain what I escaped
And others could not, that night, as in I went.
And salted was my food, and my repose,
Salted and sobered, too, by the bird's voice
Speaking for all who lay under the stars,
Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.
I
enjoyed reading both collections. Expect a quiet, reflective result.
