World War I Poetry

British War Poetry:

In the early 20th century, for the first time, a substantial number of important British poets were soldiers, writing
about their experiences of war. A number of them died on the battlefield, most famously Edward Thomas, Isaac
Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen, and Charles Sorley. Others including Robert Graves, Ivor Gurney and Siegfried Sassoon
survived but were scarred by their experiences, and this was reflected in their poetry.

The major novelist and poet Thomas Hardy wrote a number of significant war poems that relate to both the Boer Wars
and World War I, and his work had a profound influence on other war poets such as Rupert Brooke and Siegfried
Sassoon. Hardy, in these poems, often used the viewpoint of ordinary soldiers and their colloquial speech

Many poems by British war poets were published in newspapers and then collected in anthologies. Several of these
early anthologies were published during the war and were very popular, though the tone of the poetry changed as the
war progressed.

Initially, some poems represented the mood of optimism and patriotism with which many writers of the time greeted
the outbreak of war. This was a time when people believed war presented opportunities for chivalry, self-sacrifice and
heroism. There was a belief that the war wold be over in six months and that going to war would be an adventure.

Within a short period, however, the poems began to reflect the harsh realities of war. These poems were written by
men with frontline experience, men who had known first-hand the realities of trench warfare. The realities were
appalling and unimaginable, a stark contrast to the glorious expectations of the pre-war poetry.

After the war, poetry dealt with casualties, the wounded and the dead. The soldiers returned home physically and
emotionally shattered and to very little understanding or support from the society who sent them away. Full of
disillusionment and despair, these poems significantly contrasted against the hope and optimism of pre-war
sentiments.

* Please note that some of the dates below refer to date of publication, not necessarily date of composition.

1. The Volunteer - Herbert Asquith (1912)

2. All The Hills And Vales Along - Charles Hamilton Sorley (1914)
3. Men Who March Away - Thomas Hardy (1917)
4. Exposure - Wilfred Owen (1917)
5. Dulce Et Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen (1917)
6. Mental Cases - Wilfred Owen (1918)
7. Disabled - Wilfred Owen (1918)
8. The Kiss - Siegfried Sassoon (1918)
9. Suicide In The Trenches - Siegfried Sassoon (1918)
10. Glory of Women - Siegfried Sassoon (1918)
11. Repression of War Experience - Siegfried Sassoon (1918)
12. The Death-Bed - Siegfried Sassoon (1918)
13. Recalling The War - Robert Graves (~1938)
14. The Next War - Osbert Sitwell (1931?)
 The Volunteer - Herbert Asquith (1912)

Here lies a clerk who half his life had spent 


Toiling at ledgers in a city grey, 

Thinking that so his days would drift away 

With no lance broken in life’s tournament: 

Yet ever ’twixt the books and his bright eyes 

The gleaming eagles of the legions came, 

And horsemen, charging under phantom skies, 

Went thundering past beneath the oriflamme. 



And now those waiting dreams are satisfied; 

From twilight to the halls of dawn he went; 

His lance is broken; but he lies content 

With that high hour, in which he lived and died. 

And falling thus he wants no recompense, 

Who found his battle in the last resort; 

Nor needs he any hearse to bear him hence, 

Who goes to join the men of Agincourt
All The Hills And Vales Along - Charles Hamilton Sorley (1914)

All the hills and vales along

Earth is bursting into song,
And the singers are the chaps
Who are going to die perhaps.
O sing, marching men,
Till the valleys ring again.
Give your gladness to earth’s keeping,
So be glad, when you are sleeping.

Cast away regret and rue,

Think what you are marching to.
Little live, great pass.
Jesus Christ and Barabbas
Were found the same day.
This died, that went his way.
So sing with joyful breath,
For why, you are going to death.
Teeming earth will surely store
All the gladness that you pour.

Earth that never doubts nor fears,

Earth that knows of death, not tears,
Earth that bore with joyful ease
Hemlock for Socrates,
Earth that blossomed and was glad
‘Neath the cross that Christ had,
Shall rejoice and blossom too
When the bullet reaches you.
Wherefore, men marching
On the road to death, sing!
Pour your gladness on earth’s head,
So be merry, so be dead.

From the hills and valleys earth

Shouts back the sound of mirth,
Tramp of feet and lilt of song
Ringing all the road along.
All the music of their going,
Ringing swinging glad song-throwing,
Earth will echo still, when foot
Lies numb and voice mute.
On, marching men, on
To the gates of death with song.
Sow your gladness for earth’s reaping,
So you may be glad, though sleeping.
Strew your gladness on earth’s bed,
So be merry, so be dead.
Men Who March Away - Thomas Hardy (1917)

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?

Is it a purblind prank, O think you,

Friend with the musing eye,
Who watch us stepping by
With doubt and dolorous sigh?
Can much pondering so hoodwink you!
Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye?

Nay. We well see what we are doing,

Though some may not see—
Dalliers as they be—
England's need are we;
Her distress would leave us rueing:
Nay. We well see what we are doing,
Though some may not see!

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.

 Exposure - Wilfred Owen (1917)

   I
Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us...

Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent...

Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient...

Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,

             But nothing happens.
Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.

Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.

Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,

Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.

             What are we doing here?
The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow...

We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.

Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army

Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray,

             But nothing happens.
Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.

Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,

With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause and renew,

We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance,

             But nothing happens.
   II
Pale flakes with lingering stealth come feeling for our faces -

We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,

Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,

Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.

             Is it that we are dying?
Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires glozed

With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;

For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;

Shutters and doors all closed: on us the doors are closed -

             We turn back to our dying.
Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;

Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.

For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;

Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,

             For love of God seems dying.
To-night, His frost will fasten on this mud and us,

Shrivelling many hands and puckering foreheads crisp.

The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp,

Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,

             But nothing happens.
 Dulce Et Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen (1917)

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 disappointed shells 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 floundering 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.
 Mental Cases - Wilfred Owen (1918)

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight? 


Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows, 

Drooping tongues from jays that slob their relish, 

Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked? 

Stroke on stroke of pain,- but what slow panic, 

Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets? 

Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms 

Misery swelters. Surely we have perished 

Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish? 



-These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished. 

Memory fingers in their hair of murders, 

Multitudinous murders they once witnessed. 

Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander, 

Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter. 

Always they must see these things and hear them, 

Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles, 

Carnage incomparable, and human squander 

Rucked too thick for these men's extrication. 



Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented 

Back into their brains, because on their sense 

Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black; 

Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh. 

-Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous, 

Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses. 

-Thus their hands are plucking at each other; 

Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging; 

Snatching after us who smote them, brother, 

Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.

 Disabled - Wilfred Owen (1918)

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark, 


And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey, 

Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park 

Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn, 

Voices of play and pleasure after day, 

Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him. 



About this time Town used to swing so gay 

When glow-lamps budded in the light blue trees, 

And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,- 

In the old times, before he threw away his knees. 

Now he will never feel again how slim 

Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands. 

All of them touch him like some queer disease. 



There was an artist silly for his face, 

For it was younger than his youth, last year. 

Now, he is old; his back will never brace; 

He's lost his colour very far from here, 

Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry, 

And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race 

And leap of purple spurted from his thigh. 



One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg, 

After the matches, carried shoulder-high. 

It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg, 

He thought he'd better join. - He wonders why. 

Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts, 

That's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg, 

Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts 

He asked to join. He didn't have to beg; 

Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years. 



Germans he scarcely thought of; all their guilt, 

And Austria's, did not move him. And no fears 

Of Fear came yet. He drought of jewelled hills 

For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes; 

And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears; 

Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits. 

And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.
 The Kiss - Siegfried Sassoon (1918)

TO these I turn, in these I trust—

Brother Lead and Sister Steel.
To his blind power I make appeal,
I guard her beauty clean from rust.

He spins and burns and loves the air,

And splits a skull to win my praise;
But up the nobly marching days
She glitters naked, cold and fair.

Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this:

That in good fury he may feel
The body where he sets his heel
Quail from your downward darting kiss.
Suicide In The Trenches - Siegfried Sassoon (1918)

I knew a simple soldier boy

Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,

With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

 Glory of Women - Siegfried Sassoon (1918)

You love us when we're heroes, home on leave,

Or wounded in a mentionable place.
You worship decorations; you believe
That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace.
You make us shells. You listen with delight,
By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.
You crown our distant ardours while we fight,
And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.
You can't believe that British troops “retire”
When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,
Trampling the terrible corpses—blind with blood.

O German mother dreaming by the fire,

While you are knitting socks to send your son
His face is trodden deeper in the mud.

 Repression of War Experience - Siegfried Sassoon (1918)

Now light the candles; one; two; there's a moth;

What silly beggars they are to blunder in
And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame—
No, no, not that,—it's bad to think of war,
When thoughts you've gagged all day come back to scare you;
And it's been proved that soldiers don't go mad
Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts
That drive them out to jabber among the trees.

Now light your pipe; look, what a steady hand.

Draw a deep breath; stop thinking; count fifteen,
And you're as right as rain ...
Why won't it rain? ...
I wish there'd be a thunder-storm to-night,
With bucketsful of water to sluice the dark,
And make the roses hang their dripping heads.

Books; what a jolly company they are,

Standing so quiet and patient on their shelves,
Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green,
And every kind of colour. Which will you read?
Come on; O do read something; they're so wise.
I tell you all the wisdom of the world
Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet
You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out,
And listen to the silence: on the ceiling
There's one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters;
And in the breathless air outside the house
The garden waits for something that delays.
There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees,—
Not people killed in battle,—they're in France,—
But horrible shapes in shrouds--old men who died
Slow, natural deaths,—old men with ugly souls,
Who wore their bodies out with nasty sins.

* * *

You're quiet and peaceful, summering safe at home;

You'd never think there was a bloody war on! ...
O yes, you would ... why, you can hear the guns.
Hark! Thud, thud, thud,—quite soft ... they never cease—
Those whispering guns—O Christ, I want to go out
And screech at them to stop—I'm going crazy;
I'm going stark, staring mad because of the guns.

 The Death-Bed - Siegfried Sassoon (1918)

He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped

Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;
Aqueous like floating rays of amber light,
Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep.
Silence and safety; and his mortal shore
Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.

Someone was holding water to his mouth.

He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped
Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot
The opiate throb and ache that was his wound.
Water—calm, sliding green above the weir;
Water—a sky-lit alley for his boat,
Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers
And shaken hues of summer: drifting down,
He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.

Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,

Blowing the curtain to a gummering curve.
Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars
Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;
Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,
Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.

Rain—he could hear it rustling through the dark;

Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;
Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers
That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps
Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace,
Gently and slowly washing life away.

He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain

Leaped like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore
His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.
But someone was beside him; soon he lay
Shuddering because that evil thing had passed.
And death, who'd stepped toward him, paused and stared.

Light many lamps and gather round his bed.

Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live.
Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet.
He's young; he hated war; how should he die
When cruel old campaigners win safe through?

But death replied: “I choose him.” So he went,

And there was silence in the summer night;
Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.
Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.

 Recalling The War - Robert Graves (~1938)

Entrance and exit wounds are silvered clean,

The track aches only when the rain reminds.
The one-legged man forgets his leg of wood
The one-armed man his jointed wooden arm.
The blinded man sees with his ears and hands
As much or more than once with both his eyes.
Their war was fought these twenty years ago
And now assumes the nature-look of time,
As when the morning traveller turn and views
His wild night-stumbling carved into a hill.

What, then, was war? No mere discord of flags

But an infection of the common sky
That sagged ominously upon the earth
Even when the season was the airiest May.
Down pressed the sky, and we, oppressed, thrust out
Boastful tongue, clenched fist and valiant yard.
Natural infirmiries were out of mode,
For Death was young again: patron alone
Of healthy dying, premature fate-spasm.

Fear made fine bed-fellows. Sick with delight

At life's discovered transitoriness,
Out youth became all-flesh and waived the mind.
Never was such antiqueness of romance,
Such tasty honey oozing from the heart.
And old importances came swimming back —
Wine, meat, log-fires, a roof over the head,
A weapon at the thigh, surgeons at call.
Even there was a use again for God —
A word of rage in lack of meat, wine, fire,
In ache of wounds beyond all surgeoning.

War was return of earth to ugly earth,

War was foundering of sublimities,
Extinction of each happy art and faith
By which the world had still kept head in air,
Protesting logic or protesting love,
Until the unendurable moment struck —
The inward scream, the duty to run mad.

And we recall the merry ways of guns —

Nibbling the walls of factory and church
Like a child, piecrust; felling groves of trees
Like a child, dandelions with a switch.
Machine-guns rattle toy-like from a hill,
Down in a row the brave tin-soldiers fall:
A sight to be recalled in elder days
When learnedly the future we devote
To yet more boastful visions of despair. 

The Next War - Osbert Sitwell (1931?)

The long war had ended.

Its miseries had grown faded.
Deaf men became difficult to talk to,
Heroes became bores.
Those alchemists
Who had converted blood into gold
Had grown elderly.
But they held a meeting,
Saying,
'We think perhaps we ought
To put up tombs
Or erect altars
To those brave lads
Who were so willingly burnt,
Or blinded,
Or maimed,
Who lost all likeness to a living thing,
Or were blown to bleeding patches of flesh
For our sakes.
It would look well.
Or we might even educate the children.'
But the richest of these wizards
Coughed gently;
And he said:

'I have always been to the front

-In private enterprise-,
I yield in public spirit
To no man.
I think yours is a very good idea
-A capital idea-
And not too costly . . .
But it seems to me
That the cause for which we fought
Is again endangered.
What more fitting memorial for the fallen
Than that their children
Should fall for the same cause?'

Rushing eagerly into the street,

The kindly old gentlemen cried
To the young:
'Will you sacrifice
Through your lethargy
What your fathers died to gain ?
The world must be made safe for the young!'
And the children
Went. . . .

Further reading - Australian War Poetry:

Australian war poems record the effects of the many wars Australians fought in during the twentieth century, a period
when one war followed another. A number of earlier war poets write about the significance of the ANZAC campaign
at Gallipoli during World War 1. Roderic Quinn’s Poems (1920) includes the tributes ‘The Soul of the Anzac’ and ‘The
Twenty-Fifth of April’. Writing around the same time, John Le Gay Brereton also acknowledged the achievement of
the Anzacs in his poem ‘ANZAC’, even though he was himself as a pacifist as is shown in his poem ‘War’. Later poets
who have written about the significance of Anzac Day include John Forbes in ‘Anzac Day’ and Tom Shapcott in ‘Anzac
Park’, where he recalls an Anzac Day ceremony he attended as a child. Shapcott has also written about his father’s
experiences as a soldier during World War 1 in his poem ‘War’. In contrast, Bruce Beaver’s ‘R.M.R. War 1916’ deals
with the experiences of the German poet Rilke during World War 1. Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s ‘Other People’ wonders
who want war, as he recounts the death of four of his uncles during World War 1.

Douglas Stewart’s ‘Sonnets to the Unknown Soldier’ were published in 1941 during the height of World War 2. It
begins ‘We thought we had buried war with unknown soldier’. Other Australian poets recall the impact of World War
2 during their childhood. For Margaret Scott, in ‘Peace and War’, it was a childhood in England threatened by
invasion. Those who grew up in Australia recall the joy after the defeat of Japan, as does Katherine Gallagher in her
‘The Last War’ and Geoff Page in ‘The End of the Pacific War’. An older poet, Geoffrey Dutton thinks back over his
own wartime experiences in ‘A Wreath for Anzac’, as he is about to take part in an Anzac Day march. Andrew Sant’s
‘War Veteran’ is a Vietnam war poem.

Two examples of short war poems are Richard Tipping’s ironic ‘War’ and A D Hope’s ‘Inscription for a War’, both of
which are strongly anti-war in sentiment.