Introduction:

As my title mentions I am going to expose some features of the First World War poetry and how this fact, World War I, affects the poets, and in particular how it affected Rupert Brooke. But all of this information I am going to compare with the theme that the archive team has chosen at the first paper, “Love and Worship of Nature”. Also this, I want to mention how we can find this theme as we have done in other periods before.

“Great Britain declared war on Germany on 4^th August 1914. Behind this climatic event lay a long story of national, commercial, and colonial rivalry among the European powers…”

(Twenty century English Literature. Harry Blamires. Macmillan Press. 1982. [page 66])

“There was probably at least as much poetry of quality written on the German side of the Western Front; but it was in English poetry, such as that of Wilfred Owen, that the war poem became an established genre marker and attracted growing popular interest”

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World_War_poetry

Section: First world war

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page [15/03/2007])

“It is difficult to imagine something truly poetic and beautiful generating from war and conflict. For most of us the experience of war is remote. Those who have been affected by its destructive force are fortunately in a minority, but this was not always the case.

The First World War produced some of the most gifted and progressive authors, poets and artists of a generation, each channelling their individual and collective experiences into their chosen art form.

The poetry of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Charlotte Mew amongst others catches a truth we can remember and absorb in a consoling and illuminating way.”

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/remembrance/poetry/wwone.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/home/d/ [12/03/2007])

“The English poets who saw combat in the First World War were, with unimportant exceptions, Georgian poets. They were either already established within the Georgian literary world like Brooke, or else they were younger writers developing in the same tradition, like Blunden and Owen. …. Moreover, given some of the traits of Georgian poetry- its commitment to nature , to charm, to the agreeable – it especially might seem unprepared to confront to mechanized horror...”

(A history of modern Poetry. “From the 1890’s to the High Modernist Mode”. David Perkins. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 1976 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. [page 267])

As we can read in these paragraphs that I take from some sources the War poetry is very influencied by the fact of the war, the horror and the pain. But main influence is the death.

 
Main Body: 
 
I choose Rupert Brooke to exemplify how the war poetry is. He has a lot of poems and sonnets but only a few of them he made a reference about our theme, Love and Worship of Nature. 
 
In these two that I chose he described a fact, something that he see at the War. We can see that these two poems use the nature to describe the horror and the fear that he felt in the war. He was telling what he see and feel in these days of war while he was in the Front. 
 
In the first one he mention God “ as who would pray good…” (l. 7). All that I listen and read about War tell me that in these days that the people is far from their home they need to pray. For what? They pray for themselves, to come back home save. They pray for their families, because they hope that their families have not necessities or because they are not ill during these days that they are far away. 
 
Clouds
 
Down the blue night the unending columns press
In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,
Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow
Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness.
Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,
And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,
As who would pray good for the world, but know
Their benediction empty as they bless.
 
They say that the Dead die not, but remain
Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.
I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,
In wise majestic melancholy train,
And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,
And men, coming and going on the earth.
 
The Pacific, October 1913
 

http://www.firstworldwar.com/poetsandprose/texts/Rupert%20Brooke%20-%20The%20Collected%20Poems%20of%20Rupert%20Brooke.txt

Section: Rupert Brooke

http://www.firstworldwar.com/poetsandprose/brooke.htm [23/03/2007]

In this poem he uses the direct speech to make a conversation. We can see that the last line in each paragraph have the same structure is like a conclusion sentences.

The Hill
 
Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,
Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.
You said, "Through glory and ecstasy we pass;
Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still,
When we are old, are old. . . ." "And when we die
All's over that is ours; and life burns on
Through other lovers, other lips," said I,
-- "Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!"
 
"We are Earth's best, that learnt her lesson here.
Life is our cry. We have kept the faith!" we said;
"We shall go down with unreluctant tread
Rose-crowned into the darkness!" . . . Proud we were,
And laughed, that had such brave true things to say.
-- And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.
 

http://www.firstworldwar.com/poetsandprose/texts/Rupert%20Brooke%20-%20The%20Collected%20Poems%20of%20Rupert%20Brooke.txt

Section: Rupert Brooke

http://www.firstworldwar.com/poetsandprose/brooke.htm [23/03/2007]

CONCLUSION:

The poets of the War are influenced by the war, so they write and describe using some Nature features but with war feelings as were horror, fear, death, pain…In my opinion each of the poets has the same characteristics and in their poems what we can see were the War, a fact that influenced in the life of each one that life it and a fact that change the life of each of the soldiers that there were there. But this fact not only affects to the poets who were in the Front, this affects to the families and each one that were born in this time.

So, these two poems we can see that express the nature as a war view, with the feelings that a soldier has when he was at the Front.

These are the same that happen with Victorian time, which used the Nature but not such as used by the romantics, who used the Nature as such. The Victorian used the Nature to describe another feeling like death or love but with nature vocabulary which make a different feeling in the reader.

So we see that Nature is a source that used the poets of each time but in different way and with a different aim.

Bibliography:

- A history of modern Poetry. “From the 1890’s to the High Modernist Mode”. David Perkins. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 1976 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. [page 267]

- La poesia inglesa del siglo XX. Esteban Pujals . Editorial Planeta.01973. Barcelona

- Poetry of the First World War. Longman English Series. Editor Maurice Hussey. 1967. Hong Kong.

- Twenty century English Literature. Harry Blamires. Macmillan Press. 1982. [page 66]

- (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World_War_poetry

- Section: First World War

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page [15/03/2007]

- http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/remembrance/poetry/wwone.shtml

- Section: Poetry

http://www.bbc.co.uk/home/d/ [12/03/2007]

Academic year 2006/2007
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Carmen Mora Vives
mamovi3@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press