greykit.poetry — #war
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1920
[wilfred-owen]
Anthem for Doomed Youth
What passing-bells for those who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns — no mockeries, no prayers; their only memorial the tenderness of patient minds, and each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
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1920
[wilfred-owen]
Dulce et Decorum Est
Owen's soldiers march exhausted through sludge; a gas attack takes one too slow with his helmet; the speaker inverts Horace's old lie — you would not glorify war if you had watched this man drown in his own lungs.
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1920
[wilfred-owen]
Exposure
Not the guns but the weather is the enemy — merciless iced east winds that knife them, sentries whispering, dawn massing in the east — and after every stanza the same shrug: but nothing happens.
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1920
[wilfred-owen]
Futility
Move him into the sun — it woke him always, even in France, until this morning and this snow; was it for this the clay grew tall? — O what made fatuous sunbeams toil to break earth's sleep at all?
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1920
[wilfred-owen]
Insensibility
Happy are men who can lose imagination — the ode works through every kind of merciful deadening the front supplies, then curses those who by choice made themselves immune to the eternal reciprocity of tears.
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1920
[wilfred-owen]
Strange Meeting
Escaping down a tunnel out of battle, the speaker meets a sleeper who springs up and turns out to be the man he killed — and who mourns not his own death but the truth untold, the pity of war, the pity war distilled.
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1920
[wilfred-owen]
The Send-off
A draft entrained in secret, sung down the close darkening lanes and wreathed as if already a corpse — and the question of how many will come back, up half-known roads, to village wells.
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1918
[carl-sandburg]
Grass
Austerlitz, Waterloo, Gettysburg, Ypres and Verdun are shovelled under and the grass gets to work — until the passengers no longer know what place this is. I am the grass. Let me work.
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1914
[thomas-hardy]
Channel Firing
Gunnery practice in April 1914 wakes the dead, who take it for Judgement Day; God tells them it is only the world making red war redder — and the sound carries inland to Stourton Tower, Camelot, and Stonehenge.
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1902
[thomas-hardy]
The Man He Killed
A soldier tries to explain why he shot a man he would have stood a drink in any old inn — and gets no further than because he was my foe, quaint and curious as war is.
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1854
[alfred-lord-tennyson]
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Tennyson's galloping tribute to the doomed cavalry charge at Balaclava — half a league onward into the valley of Death, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.
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1815
[lord-byron]
The Destruction of Sennacherib
In thundering anapests Byron retells the annihilation of the Assyrian host — gleaming one evening at sunset, silent and dead by dawn, melted by the Lord's glance.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book I: The Contention of Achilles and Agamemnon
Book I of Pope's Iliad: The Contention of Achilles and Agamemnon.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book II: The Trial of the Army, and Catalogue of the Forces
Book II of Pope's Iliad: The Trial of the Army, and Catalogue of the Forces.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book III: The Duel of Menelaus and Paris
Book III of Pope's Iliad: The Duel of Menelaus and Paris.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book IV: The Breach of the Truce, and the First Battle
Book IV of Pope's Iliad: The Breach of the Truce, and the First Battle.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book IX: The Embassy to Achilles
Book IX of Pope's Iliad: The Embassy to Achilles.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book V: The Acts of Diomed
Book V of Pope's Iliad: The Acts of Diomed.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book VI: The Episodes of Glaucus and Diomed, and of Hector and Andromache
Book VI of Pope's Iliad: The Episodes of Glaucus and Diomed, and of Hector and Andromache.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book VII: The Single Combat of Hector and Ajax
Book VII of Pope's Iliad: The Single Combat of Hector and Ajax.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book VIII: The Second Battle, and the Distress of the Greeks
Book VIII of Pope's Iliad: The Second Battle, and the Distress of the Greeks.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book X: The Night Adventure of Diomed and Ulysses
Book X of Pope's Iliad: The Night Adventure of Diomed and Ulysses.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book XI: The Third Battle, and the Acts of Agamemnon
Book XI of Pope's Iliad: The Third Battle, and the Acts of Agamemnon.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book XII: The Battle at the Grecian Wall
Book XII of Pope's Iliad: The Battle at the Grecian Wall.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book XIII: The Fourth Battle continued, in which Neptune assists the Greeks. The Acts of Idomeneus
Book XIII of Pope's Iliad: The Fourth Battle continued, in which Neptune assists the Greeks. The Acts of Idomeneus.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book XIV: Juno deceives Jupiter by the Girdle of Venus
Book XIV of Pope's Iliad: Juno deceives Jupiter by the Girdle of Venus.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book XIX: The Reconciliation of Achilles and Agamemnon
Book XIX of Pope's Iliad: The Reconciliation of Achilles and Agamemnon.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book XV: The Fifth Battle, at the Ships; and the Acts of Ajax
Book XV of Pope's Iliad: The Fifth Battle, at the Ships; and the Acts of Ajax.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book XVI: The Sixth Battle. The Acts and Death of Patroclus
Book XVI of Pope's Iliad: The Sixth Battle. The Acts and Death of Patroclus.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book XVII: The Seventh Battle, for the Body of Patroclus. The Acts of Menelaus
Book XVII of Pope's Iliad: The Seventh Battle, for the Body of Patroclus. The Acts of Menelaus.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book XVIII: The Grief of Achilles, and New Armour made him by Vulcan
Book XVIII of Pope's Iliad: The Grief of Achilles, and New Armour made him by Vulcan.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book XX: The Battle of the Gods, and the Acts of Achilles
Book XX of Pope's Iliad: The Battle of the Gods, and the Acts of Achilles.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book XXI: The Battle in the River Scamander
Book XXI of Pope's Iliad: The Battle in the River Scamander.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book XXII: The Death of Hector
Book XXII of Pope's Iliad: The Death of Hector.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book XXIII: Funeral Games in Honour of Patroclus
Book XXIII of Pope's Iliad: Funeral Games in Honour of Patroclus.
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1715
[homer]
The Iliad, Book XXIV: The Redemption of the Body of Hector
Book XXIV of Pope's Iliad: The Redemption of the Body of Hector.