In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. Her sights and sounds dreams happy as her day Īnd laughter, learnt of friends and gentleness, Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.Īnd think, this heart, all evil shed away, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,Ī body of England’s, breathing English air, In that rich earth a richer dust concealed Ī dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, That there’s some corner of a foreign field Your faces drowning in the pages of the sea. History might as well be water, chastising this shore įor we learn nothing from your endless sacrifice. You gave your world for the town squares silent,Īwaiting their cenotaphs. The end of God in the poisonous, shrapneled air. But how could you know, braveĪs belief as you boarded the boats, singing? The earth nursing its ticking metal eggs, hatching Not the war to end all wars death’s birthing place The century’s tides,Ĭhanting their bitter psalms, cannot heal it.
The work of the British First World War poets can be seen as one of the most powerful collective statements not just against what happened on the western front but against all war.' - Max Egremont, Some Desperate Gloryĭiscover our edit of the best poetry books. 'It’s necessary to separate politics, even history, from the poetry. These poems from World War One give a profound insight into this period of history. The First World War poets – many of whom lost their lives – became a collective voice, illuminating not only the war’s tragedies and their irreparable effects, but the hopes and disappointments of an entire generation.Īlthough it has been more than one hundred years since the Armistice and the end of the First World War, it continues to move and inspire poets, with Carol Ann Duffy penning a sonnet, ‘The Wound in Time’, as part of a series of special Remembrance Day events organised by film director Danny Boyle in 2018.Īlongside ‘The Wound in Time’, here we’ve curated a collection of just some of the poignant WW1 poems, featuring the writing of the famous soldier poets, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen, alongside the WW1 poetry of nurses, mothers, sweethearts and family and friends who experienced the war from entirely different perspectives. The First World War inspired profound poetry – words in which the atmosphere and landscape of battle were evoked perhaps more vividly than ever before.
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