The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry

by Various Contributors

  ‘The Eve of War’ appeared in Interflow: Poems Chiefly Lyrical (London: Constable & Co., 1915). ‘Home Service’ appeared in The Buried Stream: Collected Poems 1908 to 1940 (London: Faber & Faber, 1941).

  Eleanor Farjeon was born in London in 1881 and was educated privately. During the war she contributed regularly to Punch, and between 1917 and 1930 she wrote verse (as ‘Tomfool’) for the Daily Herald. A staff member of Time and Tide in the 1920s, she is best known today for her children’s verse and short stories and as author of the words of the popular hymn ‘Morning Has Broken’. She won the Library Association Carnegie Medal in 1956. She died in 1965.

  ‘Now that you too must shortly go the way’ appeared in Sonnets and Poems (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1918). ‘Easter Monday’ appeared in First and Second Love (London: Michael Joseph, 1947).

  Gilbert Frankau was born in London in 1884 and was educated at Eton. He worked in the family tobacco business, and spent two years travelling around the world between 1912 and 1914. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 9th East Surrey Regiment (‘The Gallants’) in October 1914, and transferred to the 107th Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery in March 1915. He served at Loos, Ypres and the Somme, and in Italy, but was invalided out of the army with the rank of captain in February 1918. He was a popular and prolific inter-war novelist and a squadron leader in the RAF during the Second World War. His war experiences are fictionalized in Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1920). He died in 1954.

  ‘Headquarters’ appeared in The Guns (London: Chatto & Windus, 1916). ‘The Deserter’ and ‘Wife and Country’ appeared in The Judgement of Valhalla (London: Chatto & Windus, 1918).

  John Freeman was born in Dalston, Middlesex, in 1880, the son of a commercial traveller. Educated locally in Hackney, he left school at thirteen to work as a junior clerk at the Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society, eventually rising to become a director of the same firm. He was later appointed chief executive officer in the Department of National Health and Insurance. He was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for imaginative writing in 1924, and he died five years later, in 1929.

  ‘Happy is England Now’ appeared in Stone Trees and Other Poems (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1916).

  Robert Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874 and moved to New England at the age of nineteen. He spent a year at both Dartford College and Harvard University, but left to teach, farm, and write poetry. From 1912 until 1915 he lived in England, where he became a friend of Edward Thomas (q.v.); upon his return to New England he devoted himself to poetry, supporting himself by teaching appointments at Amherst College and the University of Michigan. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his poetry in 1924, 1931, 1937 and 1943. He died in 1963.

  ‘Not to Keep’ appeared in New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes (London: Grant Richards, 1924).

  Wilfrid Gibson was born in Hexham, Northumberland, in 1878 and was educated locally. A published poet while still in his teens, he was a friend of Rupert Brooke (q.v.) and, with him, one of the founders of the Georgian Movement in poetry. He volunteered in 1915, but was rejected four times because of his poor eyesight. Finally accepted by the Army Service Corps, he served first as a ‘loader and packer’ and later as a medical officer’s clerk in Sydenham. He died in 1962.

  ‘Breakfast’, ‘His Mate’ and ‘The Question’ appeared in Battle (London: Elkin Matthews, 1915). ‘Air-Raid’, ‘Ragtime’ and ‘The Conscript’ appeared in Neighbours (London: Macmillan & Co., 1920).

  Robert Graves was born in Southwark, London, in 1895 and was educated at Charterhouse. Shortly after he left school the war broke out, and he immediately enlisted as a second lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. He saw active service on the Western Front until February 1917, when ill health resulted in his being posted for home duties in Great Britain and Ireland until his demobilization in February 1919. After a brief and unsuccessful period at St John’s College, Oxford, he took up the post of Professor of English Literature at Cairo University, later moving to Majorca. He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford between 1961 and 1966. His wartime experiences are recorded in Goodbye to All That (London: Jonathan Cape, 1929) and But It Still Goes On (London: Jonathan Cape, 1930). He died in 1985.

  ‘It’s a Queer Time’ appeared in Over the Brazier (London: Poetry Bookshop, 1916). ‘A Child’s Nightmare’, ‘A Dead Boche’, ‘Dead Cow Farm’, ‘The Last Post’ and ‘Two Fusiliers’ appeared in Fairies and Fusiliers (London: William Heinemann, 1917). ‘Recalling War’ appeared in Collected Poems (London: Cassell & Co., 1938). ‘The Survivor Comes Home’ appeared in Complete Poems: Vol. 3, ed. Beryl Graves and Dunstan Ward (Manchester: Carcanet, 1999).

  Julian Grenfell was born in London in 1888, the son of Lord Desborough, and was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford. He joined the First Royal Dragoons (The Royals) in 1910 and served as a cavalry officer in India and South Africa during the next four years. On the outbreak of the First World War he was sent to France, where he was twice mentioned in dispatches and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. He was badly wounded by shrapnel during action near Ypres, and died in hospital in Boulogne on 30 April 1915.

  ‘Into Battle’ appeared in A Crown of Amaranth: Being a Collection of Poems to the Memory of the Brave and Gallant Gentlemen Who Gave Their Lives for Great and Greater Britain (London: Erskine Macdonald, 1915).

  Ivor Gurney was born in Gloucester in 1890, the son of a tailor. He was educated at King’s School, Gloucester, and at the Royal College of Music in London, where a nervous breakdown did not prevent him from producing some of his finest song settings. He joined the 2/5th Battalion of the Gloucester Regiment in February 1915 and saw active service on the Western Front between June 1916 and September 1917. He was invalided home after being gassed during the Passchendaele Offensive, and suffered a severe mental breakdown shortly afterwards. He returned to the Royal College of Music in 1919, but his mental condition worsened again and in September 1922 he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and was committed first to an asylum in Gloucester and then to the City of London Mental Hospital in Dartford. He died there of tuberculosis on 26 December 1937.

  ‘Ballad of the Three Spectres’ and ‘Sonnets 1917: Servitude’ appeared in Severn and Somme (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1917). ‘To his Love’ appeared in War’s Embers and Other Verses (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1919). ‘The Silent One’, ‘Strange Hells’ and ‘War Books’ appeared in Poems by Ivor Gurney: Principally Selected from Unpublished Manuscripts, with a Memoir by Edmund Blunden (London: Hutchinson & Co, 1954). ‘After War’, ‘Canadians’, ‘Crucifix Corner’ and ‘Serenade’ appeared in Poems of Ivor Gurney 1890–1937: With an Introduction by Edmund Blunden and a Bibliographical Note by Leonard Clark (London: Chatto & Windus, 1973). ‘Blighty’, ‘Butchers and Tombs’, ‘First Time In’, ‘It Is Near Toussaints’ and ‘On Somme’ appeared in Collected Poems of Ivor Gurney, ed. P. J. Kavanagh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). ‘Portrait of a Coward’ appeared in Best Poems and The Book of Five Makings, ed. R. K. R. Thornton and George Walter (Ashington and Manchester: MidNAG and Carcanet, 1995).

  Thomas Hardy was born at Upper Bockhampton in Dorset in 1840. He went to school in Dorchester, receiving private tuition in Latin and French, and practised as an architect before finding worldwide fame as a novelist, but the negative reaction to his Jude the Obscure (1898) led him to abandon prose for poetry. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1910, and he died in 1928.

  ‘Channel Firing’ and ‘Men Who March Away’ appeared in Satires of Circumstance: Lyrics and Reveries with Miscellaneous Pieces (London: Macmillan & Co., 1914). ‘I looked up from my writing’ appeared in Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses (London: Macmillan & Co., 1917).

  F[rederick] W[illiam] Harvey was born in Hartpury, Gloucestershire, in 1888. He was educated at Rossall School, and later trained as a solicitor. Enlisting in the 1/5th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment at the outbreak of war,
he arrived in France in March 1915, and soon afterwards won the Distinguished Conduct Medal. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant, but was captured by the Germans in August 1916 and spent the rest of the war in camps at Crefeld and Guterslöh. After the war he returned to practising as a solicitor, while continuing to write poetry. His war experiences are recounted in Comrades in Captivity (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1920). He died in 1957.

  ‘If We Return’ appeared in A Gloucestershire Lad at Home and Abroad (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1916). ‘Prisoners’ appeared in Gloucestershire Friends: Poems from a German Prison Camp (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1917). ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes –’ appeared in September and Other Poems (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1925).

  May Herschel-Clarke. Nothing is known of this author, but ‘The Mother’ appeared in Behind the Firing Line and Other Poems of the War (London: Erskine Macdonald, 1917).

  W[illiam] N[oel] Hodgson was born in Petersfield, Hampshire, in 1893 and was educated at Durham School and at Christ Church, Oxford. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 9th Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment in September 1914. He was sent to France in July 1915 and was promoted to lieutenant in September, winning the Military Cross a month later. He died on the first day of the Somme Offensive, on 1 July 1916.

  ‘Back to Rest’ and ‘Before Action’ appeared in Verse and Prose in Peace and War (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1916).

  Teresa Hooley was born at Risley Lodge, Derbyshire, in 1888 and was educated by a private governess and then at Howard College, Bedford. She wrote poetry throughout her life. She died in 1973.

  ‘A War Film’ appeared in Songs of All Seasons (London: Jonathan Cape, 1927).

  A[lfred] E[dward] Housman was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, in 1859 and was educated at Bromsgrove School and at St John’s College, Oxford. He worked for many years as a Higher Division Clerk in the Patent Office in London, but when the Professor of Greek and Latin at University College London died he was offered the chair on the strength of seventeen testimonials and took the seat in 1892. He went on to become a distinguished classical scholar, a poet, and, in 1911, Professor of Latin at Cambridge University. He died in 1936.

  ‘On the idle hill of summer’ appeared in A Shropshire Lad (London: Grant Richards, 1896). ‘Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries’ appeared in Last Poems (London: Grant Richards, 1922).

  Philip Johnstone. ‘High Wood’ was first published in The Nation on 16 February 1918, but nothing is known about its author. Frequently anthologized today, this version is taken from what seems to be its first appearance in book form in Vain Glory: A Miscellany of the Great War 1914–1918 Written by Those Who Fought in it on Each Side and All Fronts, ed. with an introduction by Guy Chapman (London: Cassell & Co., 1937).

  G[eoffrey] A[nketell] Studdert Kennedy was born in Leeds in 1883 and was educated at Leeds Grammar School and at Trinity College, Dublin. He was ordained as an Anglican minister in 1908, and joined the Army Chaplains Department in December 1915. He had three spells in the trenches – on the Somme in 1916, at Messines Ridge in 1917, and during the final advance in 1918 – but otherwise was posted behind the lines, where he preached powerful, unconventional sermons to large congregations. He was awarded the Military Cross in 1917, and after the Armistice he continued to write poetry and to champion the underprivileged. He died in 1929.

  ‘Dead and Buried’ and ‘If ye Forget’ appeared in Peace Rhymes of a Padre (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1920). ‘Woodbine Willie’ appeared in The Sorrows of God and Other Poems (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1921).

  Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865 and was educated at the United Services College at Westward Ho!, Devon. He was a journalist in India between 1882 and 1889, and later became one of Britain’s best-known novelists and poets. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907, but refused the Poet Laureateship on three occasions. He was one of the instigators of the burial of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey on 11 November 1920, and proposed the standard inscription used in British war cemeteries across the world: ‘their name liveth for evermore’. He died in 1936.

  ‘Epitaphs: A Son’, ‘Epitaphs: Common Form’, ‘Epitaphs: The Coward’, ‘For All We Have and Are’, ‘Gethsemane’ and ‘My Boy Jack’ appeared in The Years Between (London: Methuen & Co., 1919).

  D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence was born in Nottingham in 1885, the son of a miner, and was educated at University College, Nottingham. A schoolteacher before turning to writing as a profession, he was a prolific novelist and short-story writer. Apart from the years spent in England during the First World War, he lived mostly abroad – in Italy, Australia and New Mexico. He died in Vence, near Nice, in 1930.

  ‘Bombardment’, ‘Going Back’ and ‘Rondeau of a Conscientious Objector’ appeared in Bay: A Book of Poems (London: Beaumont Press, 1919).

  Amy Lowell was born into an illustrious New England family in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1874, and was educated privately. A central figure in the Imagist Movement in poetry, she edited several anthologies of her fellow Imagists’ work and became so active in the movement that Ezra Pound (q.v.) renamed it ‘Amy-gism’. Her book of poetry What’s O’Clock (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1925) was published posthumously shortly after her death in 1925 and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.

  ‘Convalescence’ appeared in Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (London: Macmillan & Co., 1914).

  W[alter] S[cott] S[tuart] Lyon was born in North Berwick in 1886 and was educated at Haileybury and at Balliol College, Oxford. From December 1912 he served as a territorial in the 9th Battalion (Highlanders) of the Royal Scots Regiment with the rank of lieutenant. Like all territorials, he was mobilized in August 1914, and he went to France in February of the following year. He was killed in action on 8 May 1915 during the Second Battle of Ypres.

  ‘I tracked a dead man down a trench’ appeared in Easter at Ypres 1915 and Other Poems (Glasgow: James Maclehose & Sons, 1916).

  Rose Macaulay was born in Cambridge in 1881 but spent most of her childhood in Italy. She was educated at Somerville College, Oxford, and became a novelist, essayist, and poet, contributing regularly to Time and Tide and The Spectator. She was named a Dame of the British Empire in 1958, and died the same year.

  ‘Picnic’ appeared in Three Days (London: Constable & Co., 1919).

  John McCrae was born in Guelph, Ontario, in 1872, and trained as a doctor at McGill University, Montreal. He served as a gunner and an officer in an artillery battery with the Canadian Contingent in the second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), and when the First World War broke out he joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps, sailing immediately for France as surgeon to the First Brigade of Canadian Artillery. After manning a dressing station during the Second Battle of Ypres, he was put in charge of the No. 3 General Hospital in Boulogne. In January 1918 he was appointed consultant to all the British armies in France, but he died of pneumonia before he could take up the position.

  ‘In Flanders Fields’ appeared in In Flanders Fields and Other Poems (London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 1919).

  Patrick MacGill was born near Glenties in Donegal in 1890 and was educated locally. In his own words, he worked as a ‘farm servant, byer-man, drainer, potato-digger, surface-man and navvy’ before joining the editorial staff of the Daily Express in 1911. He enlisted at the outbreak of war, and became a sergeant in the 18th London Regiment (London Irish Rifles). He went to France in March 1915, and was wounded at Loos in October that year. He published many books during his lifetime, including poetry, novels and plays. His war experiences are recounted in The Amateur Army (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1915), The Red Horizon (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1916) and The Great Push (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1916). He died in 1963.

  ‘Before the Charge’ appeared in Soldier Songs (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1917).

  E[wart] A[lan] Mackintosh was born in Brighton in 1893 and was educated at St Paul’s School and at Christ Church, Oxford. He left Oxford to join the 5th Battal
ion of the Seaforth Highlanders (The Sutherland and Caithness Highland), and in July 1915 was sent to France, where he was awarded the Military Cross in the following May. He was gassed and wounded at High Wood during the Somme Offensive and returned to England, where he trained the Cadet Corps at Cambridge. He returned to the front in 1917, and was killed at Cambrai on 21 November.

  ‘In Memoriam Private D. Sutherland…’ appeared in A Highland Regiment (London: John Lane, 1917). ‘Recruiting’ appeared in War, the Liberator and Other Pieces: With a Memoir (London: John Lane, 1918).

  Frederic Manning was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1882, and was educated privately. To complete his studies, he was sent to England, where he established a reputation as a minor poet and critic. He enlisted as a private in the 7th Battalion of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry in 1915, and served in France for the next two years. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment in May 1917, but his poor health prevented further active service and he was demobilized in March 1918. His war experiences are recounted in fictional form in The Middle Parts of Fortune (London: Piazza Press, 1929), reissued a year later in an expurgated edition as Her Privates We (London: Peter Davies, 1930). He died in 1935.

  ‘Grotesque’ and ‘The Face’ appeared in Eidola (London: John Murray, 1917).

  John Masefield was born in Ledbury, Herefordshire, in 1878 and was educated at King’s School, Warwick, and on board the training ship HMS Conway. Between 1895 and 1897 he lived in New York, working as a bartender and in a carpet factory. On his return to England he worked as a journalist, poet and playwright, finding fame with The Everlasting Mercy (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1911), a narrative poem deemed shocking at the time because of its realism. On the outbreak of war he became an orderly at a British Red Cross hospital in France, and in 1915 he took charge of a motor-boat ambulance service at Gallipoli. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1930, and was awarded the Order of Merit in 1935. He died in 1967.