Jump to content
Free downloads from TNA ×
The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

Best four lines of poetry..


withcall

Recommended Posts

For me, Dulce et Decorum Est is haunting from beginning to end. I can recite it without ever having tried to memorise it.

Owen again, from Spring Offensive:

And the far valley behind where buttercups

Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up;

Where even the little brambles would not yield

But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing arms.

……

Over an open stretch of herbs and heather

Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned

With fury against them; earth set sudden cups

In thousands for their blood.

A.P. Herbert, Beaucourt Revisited:

We only walk with reverence this sullen mile of mud

The shell-holes hold our history, and half of them our blood.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Without cheating and only using 4 lines of my favourite poem

Somebody saw him fall,

Part of him mud, part of him blood,

The rest of him -- not at all.

And yet I'll bet he was never afraid,

The fool

Robert W Service

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Two ghostly soldiers are walking together:

They are speaking together of what they loved in vain here,

but the air is too thin to carry the things they say.

They were young and golden, but they came on pain here,

and their youth is age now, their gold is grey.

Humbert Wolfe: The Soldier (1916).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Vance Palmer

The farm, and the kindly Bush, and the young calves lowing;

But all that my mind sees

Is a quaking bog in a mist – stark, snapped trees,

And the dark Somme flowing.

Don

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've got to confess to being a fan of Wilfrid Gibson.

I lay an age and idly gazed at nothing,

Half-puzzled that I couldn't lift my head;

And then somehow I knew that I was lying

Among the other dead.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok it's 5 lines!

From T E Hulme 'Trenches:St. Eloi'

Before the line, chaos:

My mind is a corridor,

The minds around me are corridors,

Nothing suggests iteself.

There is nothing to do but keep on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are no roses on sailors graves,

Nor wreaths upon the storm tossed waves,

No last post from the Royals band,

So far away from their native land,

No heartbroken words carved on stone,

Just shipmates bodies there alone,

The only tributes are the seagulls sweeps,

And the teardrop when a loved one weeps.

Anon. Translation of a German folk song.

Kath.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Where were you when the bullets were flying

All our young men lay dying

And families at home left crying

Where were you?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They leave these blond still days

In dust behind their tread

They see with living eyes

How long they have been dead.

Isaac Rosenberg's final poem, written a few days before his death in April 1918.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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 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 the suns of home.

As far as unknown poets go:

A dull grey sky that hangs above,

A dull grey earth that sleeps beneath...

Nought there to see, and nought to feel

Save how the sword of misery

Doth stab and stab again unceasingly:

Nor aught the gaping wound can ever heal

For he is gone, for he is dead.

He died for home and freedom, but he died, he died...

Not bad for a 17 year old schoolboy who was still a year away from joining the army.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi

Christmas: 1924 by Thomas Hardy (who turned to poetry after having his last book publicly burned on the instructions of the Archbishop of Cantabury)

“’Peace upon earth!' was said.

We sing it,

And pay a million priests to bring it.

After two thousand years of mass

We've got as far as poison-gas.”

Regards

Mart

Link to comment
Share on other sites

J.C. Squire, The Dilemma.

GOD heard the embattled nations sing and shout

"Gott strafe England!" and "God save the King!"

God this, God that, and God the other thing

"Good God!" said God, "I've got my work cut out."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

was going to quote 'High Flight' a bit of Brooke or G.K.Chesterton but i was beaten to it!

i scribbled this down when i saw it, dont know who wrote it though.

and its six lines, sorry!

After he sleeps, the cannon roar

Disturb his calm repose no more,

What though no voice of home was near

To soothe with love his dying ear,

The cloud is past from that dear brow,

It glows in heavens own brightness now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We are the guns, and your masters! Saw ye our flashes?

Heard ye the scream of our shells in the night, and the shuddering

crashes?

Saw ye our work by the roadside, the shrouded things lying,

Moaning to God that He made them - the maimed and the dying?

Husbands or sons,

Fathers or lovers, we break them. We are the guns !

The Voice of the Guns, Gilbert Frankau

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not WW1 I know but I love it.

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,

And the women come out to cut up what remains,

Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.........

or I also like

Z is for Zero, the time we go over

But must of us wish we were way back in Dover

Making munitions or rolling in clover

And far, far away from the trenches.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cynicism at its' very best:

'The world is washing out its stains,' he said.

'It doesn't like our cheeks so red:

Young blood's its great objection.

But when we're duly white-washed, being dead,

The race will bear Field-Marshal God's inspection.'

Inspection by Wilfred Owen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can’t believe everyone has take all my favourites.

Again this is from the Second World War, but I think the sentiment and anger very is strong (There are 11 verses; I included more that 4 lines to lend understanding, but the last 4 can stand on their own)

FORGOTTEN BY THE MANY REMEMBERED BY THE FEW

WE HAD OUR ARMISTICE WHEN AN ARMISTICE WAS NEW

ONE MILLION GERMANS GAVE UP TO US

WE FINISHED OUR WAR WITHOUT MUCH FUSS

FOR WE'RE THE "D" DAY DODGERS OUT HERE IN ITALY

IF YOU LOOK AROUND THE MOUNTAINS IN THE WIND AND RAIN

YOU'LL FIND THE SCATTERED CROSSES SOME WHICH BEAR NO NAME

HEART BREAK AND TOIL AND SUFFERING GONE

THE BOYS BENEATH THEM SLUMBER ON

FOR WE'RE THE "D" DAY DODGERS OUT HERE IN ITALY

Dave

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How about posting your best lines (maximum four) of WW1 poetry..? Here are my starters for 10:

'And they that fought for England, following a falling star,

Alas, alas for England, they have their graves afar.

And they that rule in England in stately conclaves met,

Alas, alas for England, they have no graves as yet.' G.K. CHESTERTON

'Always it woke him, even in France,

Until this morning and this snow.

If anything might rouse him now,

The kind old sun will know' WILFRED OWEN

'He's a cheery old card', grunted Harry to Jack,

As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both with his plan of attack.' SIEGFRIED SASSON

'And I remember not the war I fought in,

But the one called 'Great'; which ended in a sepia November

Four years before my birth.' VERNON SCANNELL

'So we crashed round the bend,

We heard his weak scream,

We heard his very last sound,

And our wheels grazed his dead face.' ISAAC ROSENBERG

THE GIFT OF LOVE

by Tom Kettle

In wiser days, my darling rosebud, blown

To beauty proud as was your mother's prime -

In that desired, delayed incredible time

You'll ask why I abandoned you, my own,

And the dear breast that was your baby's throne

To dice with death, and, oh! They'll give you rhyme

And reason; one will call the thing sublime,

And one decry it in a knowing tone.

So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,

And tired men sigh, with mud for couch and floor,

Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,

Died not for Flag, nor King, nor Emperor,

But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed,

And for the Secret Scripture of the poor.

Two days later Tom Kettle was killed in action.

"nuff said"

C.T.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is pre WW1, Boer War I think

The glamour gone, some scattered graves and memories dim remain

With his old pals across the field, he'll never trek again

But yet there's nothing he regrets as he awaits his Call

For what was done or lost or won, he did his bit - that's all

Sergeant 4486

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Since I can never see your face,

And never shake you by the hand.

I send my soul through time and space,

To greet you. You will understand"

Can't recall who wrote it, but this is mine. Says all I want to.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can't believe everyone has take all my favourites.

Again this is from the Second World War, but I think the sentiment and anger very is strong (There are 11 verses; I included more that 4 lines to lend understanding, but the last 4 can stand on their own)

FORGOTTEN BY THE MANY REMEMBERED BY THE FEW

WE HAD OUR ARMISTICE WHEN AN ARMISTICE WAS NEW

ONE MILLION GERMANS GAVE UP TO US

WE FINISHED OUR WAR WITHOUT MUCH FUSS

FOR WE'RE THE "D" DAY DODGERS OUT HERE IN ITALY

IF YOU LOOK AROUND THE MOUNTAINS IN THE WIND AND RAIN

YOU'LL FIND THE SCATTERED CROSSES SOME WHICH BEAR NO NAME

HEART BREAK AND TOIL AND SUFFERING GONE

THE BOYS BENEATH THEM SLUMBER ON

FOR WE'RE THE "D" DAY DODGERS OUT HERE IN ITALY

Dave

This was sung to the tune of Lili Marlene. It was a protest against a remark made by Lady Astor who thought that men who had taken part in the D-day landings should be demobbed first.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thus should we pay our tributary tears
When Youth doth triumph over Death; when he,
Mad with the promise of the future years,
Yieldeth his will and dies for Liberty?

John William Streets


cheers, Jon :D
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This was sung to the tune of Lili Marlene. It was a protest against a remark made by Lady Astor who thought that men who had taken part in the D-day landings should be demobbed first.

Hence the anger

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...