The Oxford Book of War Poetry

by Stallworthy, Jon

• ISBN13: 9780192141255
• ISBN10: 0192141252
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1984-10-25
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

There can be no area of human experience that has generated a wider range of powerful feelings than war. The 250 poems included in this acclaimed anthology span centuries of human conflict - from David's lament for Saul and Jonathan, and Homer's Iliad, to the finest poems of the Second World War, Vietnam, Northern Ireland, and El Salvador, as well as the chilling visions of the 'Next War'. Reflecting the feelings of authors as diverse as Virgil, Daniel Defoe, Emily Dickinson, and Adrian Mitchell, they reveal a great shift in social awareness from man's early celebratory war-songs to the more recent anti-war attitudes of poets responding to 'man's inhumanity to man', and to women and children. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xix
from The Book of Exodus	p. 1
from The Second Book of Samuel	p. 2
from The Iliad	p. 3
Thermopylae	p. 9
Hymn to the Fallen	p. 10
from The Aeneid	p. 10
from The Odes	p. 13
from The Gododdin	p. 15
Lament of the Frontier Guard	p. 17
The Finnesburh Fragment	p. 18
The Battle of Brunanburh	p. 19
The Battle of Maldon	p. 23
from The Song of Roland	p. 31
The Lament of Maev Leith-Dherg	p. 33
from The Knight's Tale	p. 34
To the Cambro-Britons, and their harp, his Ballad of Agincourt	p. 37
from Astrophel, A Pastorall Elegie Upon the Death of the Most Noble and Valorous Knight, Sir Philip Sidney	p. 40
from The Civil Wars between the Two Houses of Lancaster and York	p. 42
'Norfolk sprang thee, Lambeth holds thee dead'	p. 44
from The Fruits of War	p. 45
Farewell to Arms	p. 48
A Burnt Ship	p. 49
The Soldier Going to the Field	p. 49
To Lucasta, Going to the Wars	p. 50
An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland	p. 51
On the Late Massacre in Piedmont	p. 54
from Paradise Lost	p. 55
Song: Written at Sea in the First Dutch War (1665), the night before an Engagement	p. 56
from Annus Mirabilis	p. 59
from The Spanish Descent	p. 61
from The Campaign: A Poem to His Grace the Duke of Marlborough	p. 63
The Battle of Blenheim	p. 64
Rule, Brittania!	p. 66
from The Vanity of Human Wishes	p. 67
The Drum	p. 68
Ye Mariners of England	p. 69
Hohenlinden	p. 70
Fears in Solitude	p. 71
Old Man Travelling	p. 77
'It is not to be thought of that the flood'	p. 78
To the Men of Kent	p. 78
November, 1806	p. 78
from The Revolt of Islam	p. 79
The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna	p. 83
Advice to a Raven in Russia	p. 84
The Year 1812	p. 86
Russia 1812	p. 88
At Vshchizh	p. 90
Incident of the French Camp	p. 91
from The Dynasts	p. 92
The Destruction of Sennacherib	p. 94
from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage	p. 95
from Don Juan	p. 97
On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year	p. 99
from Horatius	p. 101
from Edinburgh after Flodden	p. 106
from Sohrab and Rustum	p. 108
The Revenge	p. 111
The Charge of the Light Brigade	p. 115
from Maud	p. 117
The Due of the Dead	p. 119
Concord Hymn	p. 121
Beat! Beat! Drums!	p. 121
Come up from the Fields Father	p. 122
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field one Night	p. 124
The Wound-Dresser	p. 125
Reconciliation	p. 127
The Portent	p. 127
Ball's Bluff	p. 128
Shiloh	p. 129
The College Colonel	p. 129
'My Portion is Defeat--today--'	p. 130
'My Triumph lasted till the Drums'	p. 131
'Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind'	p. 131
from Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration	p. 132
The Battle Hymn of the Republic	p. 135
Ode to the Confederate Dead	p. 135
Last Evening	p. 138
from Eighteen-Seventy	p. 139
Arithmetic on the Frontier	p. 142
Tommy	p. 143
He Fell among Thieves	p. 144
Vitai Lampada	p. 146
Embarcation	p. 147
The Colonel's Soliloquy	p. 147
A Christmas Ghost-Story	p. 149
Drummer Hodge	p. 149
A Wife in London	p. 150
The Man He Killed	p. 150
'On the idle hill of summer'	p. 151
'Soldier from the wars returning'	p. 152
Grenadier	p. 152
Lancer	p. 153
Astronomy	p. 154
Slain	p. 154
War	p. 155
Bridge-Guard in the Karroo	p. 156
The Dykes	p. 158
Men Who March Away	p. 160
In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'	p. 161
Peace	p. 162
The Dead	p. 162
The Soldier	p. 163
The Volunteer	p. 163
Into Battle	p. 164
In Flanders Fields	p. 165
'All the hills and vales along'	p. 166
'When you see millions of the mouthless dead'	p. 167
Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries	p. 167
Another Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries	p. 168
Grass	p. 168
Range-Finding	p. 169
The Death of a Soldier	p. 169
Calligram, 15 May 1915	p. 170
Little Song of the Maimed	p. 171
On Being Asked for a War Poem	p. 171
Easter 1916	p. 171
Sixteen Dead Men	p. 174
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death	p. 174
Reprisals	p. 175
'They'	p. 176
The Hero	p. 176
The Rear-Guard	p. 177
The General	p. 177
Glory of Women	p. 178
Everyone Sang	p. 178
In Memoriam (Easter 1915)	p. 179
The Cherry Trees	p. 179
Rain	p. 179
As the team's head brass	p. 180
To His Love	p. 181
Ballad of the Three Spectres	p. 181
The Silent One	p. 182
On Receiving News of the War	p. 183
August 1914	p. 183
Break of Day in the Trenches	p. 184
Dead Man's Dump	p. 185
Returning, We Hear the Larks	p. 187
Anthem for Doomed Youth	p. 188
Dulce Et Decorum Est	p. 188
Exposure	p. 189
Insensibility	p. 190
The Send-Off	p. 192
Futility	p. 193
Strange Meeting	p. 193
Sergeant-Major Money	p. 195
Recalling War	p. 195
The Persian Version	p. 197
Two Voices	p. 197
The Zonnebeke Road	p. 198
Vlamertinghe: Passing the Chateau, July 1917	p. 199
Report on Experience	p. 199
Battlefield	p. 200
Winter Warfare	p. 200
'My sweet old etcetera'	p. 201
'Next to of course god america i'	p. 202
'I sing of Olaf glad and big'	p. 202
In the Dordogne	p. 203
from In Parenthesis	p. 205
For the Fallen	p. 209
from Hugh Selwyn Mauberley	p. 210
Triumphal March	p. 211
Elegy in a Country Churchyard	p. 212
Epitaphs of the War	p. 213
Subalterns	p. 219
Rouen	p. 220
MCMXIV	p. 222
The Great War	p. 223
Six Young Men	p. 224
War Blinded	p. 225
from Autumn Journal	p. 226
A Letter from Aragon	p. 229
Full Moon at Tierz: Before the Storming of Huesca	p. 230
To Margot Heinemann	p. 232
'The Italian soldier shook my hand'	p. 232
'Eyes of men running, falling, screaming'	p. 234
A Moment of War	p. 234
Benicasim	p. 235
Spain 1937	p. 236
Two Armies	p. 239
Ultima Ratio Regum	p. 240
A Thousand Killed	p. 241
To a Conscript of 1940	p. 242
The Lilacs and the Roses	p. 243
The Stand-To	p. 244
Where are the War Poets?	p. 245
Ecce Homo	p. 246
Still Falls the Rain	p. 248
from The Walls Do Not Fall	p. 249
The Streets of Laredo	p. 251
Unseen Fire	p. 252
Prize for Good Conduct	p. 253
Lessons of the War	p. 254
All day it has rained ...	p. 257
Dawn on the East Coast	p. 258
Goodbye	p. 259
Song	p. 260
from The Foreign Gate	p. 261
Timoshenko	p. 264
from The Wilderness	p. 265
Gallantry	p. 267
Vergissmeinnicht	p. 267
Aristocrats	p. 268
Green, Green is El Aghir	p. 269
Soldiers Bathing	p. 270
The Middle of a War	p. 272
When a Beau Goes In	p. 272
In Distrust of Merits	p. 273
The Fury of Aerial Bombardment	p. 275
Eighth Air Force	p. 276
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner	p. 277
A Camp in the Prussian Forest	p. 277
A Front	p. 278
'After Experience Taught Me ...'	p. 279
Carentan O Carentan	p. 280
Memories of a Lost War	p. 282
The Battle	p. 282
The Heroes	p. 283
First Snow in Alsace	p. 283
Rank	p. 284
Foresight	p. 286
Walking Wounded	p. 287
St Aubin D'Aubigne	p. 289
The hand that signed the paper	p. 289
The Firebombing	p. 290
Elegy for a Dead Soldier	p. 297
Shipment to Maidanek	p. 301
from Sonnets from China	p. 302
'More Light! More Light!'	p. 303
Claus Von Stauffenberg	p. 304
Armistice Day	p. 305
At the British War Cemetery, Bayeux	p. 306
In Memory of Basil, Marquess of Dufferin and Ava	p. 307
A Fable of the War	p. 308
Redeployment	p. 309
Memorial Rain	p. 310
For Johnny	p. 311
The Lost Pilot	p. 312
The Land-Mine	p. 313
Off Brighton Pier	p. 315
A Letter from Berlin	p. 315
September Song	p. 317
I am Goya	p. 318
Fall 1961	p. 318
For the Union Dead	p. 319
A Vow	p. 321
What Were They Like?	p. 323
Vapor Trail Reflected in the Frog Pond	p. 324
How Much Longer?	p. 325
It is Dangerous to Read Newspapers	p. 326
To Whom It May Concern	p. 327
Dead Soldiers	p. 328
Requiem for the Croppies	p. 331
Whatever You Say Say Nothing	p. 331
The Strand at Lough Beg	p. 334
The Colonel	p. 336
Advice to a Prophet	p. 337
At the Bomb Testing Site	p. 338
Your Attention Please	p. 339
Notes and References	p. 341
Acknowledgements	p. 344
Index of First Lines	p. 351
Index of Poets and Translators	p. 357
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