Poem Store
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Aftermath
Siegfried Sassoon
By Siegfried Sassoon
March 1919
Have you forgotten yet? For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days,Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you’re a man reprieved to go, Taking your peaceful share of Time, with no joy to spare.
But the past is just the same - and War’s a bloody game… Have you forgotten yet?…
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget. Do you remember the dark months you held the sector?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench?
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench –
And dawn coming, dirty white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, “Is it all going to happen again?” Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the Spring that you’ll never forget.
Siegfried Sassoon CBE: born 1886: early idyllic life of hunting, cricket and country pursuits, and was later educated at Cambridge. By all accounts an officer of exceptional courage, he was known as ‘Mad Jack’. Won the MC just before the Battle of the Somme. Was the first to write sustained poetry critical of the progress of the War; he described its horrors unsparingly. Became Literary Editor of the Daily Herald: the first part of his award winning autobiography was the acclaimed Memories of a Fox-Hunting Man.
Died 1967
In Flanders Fields
By John McRae
1918
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
John McCrae, born 1872, a Canadian doctor. Went to Europe in 1914 as a gunner. In Flanders Fields first appeared anonymously in Punch, on 8 December 1915. It became the most famous poem of World War I. It was written during the second Battle of Ypres. Died in 1918.
Common Form
By Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling, born in Bombay 1865. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1907. His many verses in praise of the ordinary soldier - being stirring - were practically the only verse known to the soldiers themselves. In 1915 his only son, a lieutenant in the Irish Guards, was killed in action. His war verse subsequently became bitter. He refused the Poet Laureateship on three occasions. He contributed for many years to The Last Post being sounded every night at the Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres. Died in 1936.
'Gassed' by John Singer Sargent