• My chosen poem: "To His Love" by Ivor Gurney

• my poem:

When asked, the officer

Told me he fell with a thud

Quick, painless and noble, but I have

In my hands the note covered in mud

He wrote in his last moments with his own blood.

 

Now I sit, note in hand,

Alone in my room where I bide

Looking down at

The piece of him that I, a war bride

Must soon somehow set aside.

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War Poetry: An Informative Essay

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World War One, although agreed upon by many to be one of the worst events in human history, inspired many of the finest pieces of literature we know today. Universal themes in these works can be gauged by examining the theme, structure and literary devices used. Knowing how to detect these helps with recreating similar works, which I attempted to do. I will be discussing my successes and failures in doing so in this paper.

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“To His Love” is ostensibly a patriotic tribute to a fellow comrade fighting for the same noble cause. However, upon closer inspection, the poem is furtively ambivalent in its message. The universal idea expressed in “To His Love” by Ivor Gurney is embitterment about warfare masked by pure sadness. The speaker is lamenting the death of his friend by speaking to his friend’s lover, and as he does so, he stresses how his friend’s body represents nothing of what he was when he was alive, which conveys the message that war dehumanizes and destroys a person completely. Gurney furtively sneaks into this poem an anti-war message which, though oblique, can be detected with careful inspection. By mentioning the “violets of pride” used to “cover [his friend] over”, the speaker is stating in a surreptitious manner that the praises soldiers are receiving for their sacrifices are simply masks to cover up the truth. I attempted to include the same message in my poem by describing an officer’s untruthful message to a soldier’s lover. The officer states that the soldier died a “quick, painless and noble” death, which is a lie used to cover up the truth: the soldier had met his death slowly, with enough time to write down his last words to his lover with his own blood. The officer’s white lie, whatever his motives were for telling it, is an example of how the image of war is quixotic, and is an untruthful representation of the horrid thing it really is.

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As for structure, in “To His Love”, the first two stanzas describe life before the war, and the last two the effects of war. This contrast shows the negative effects war has on people, which ties back to the theme of sadness and embitterment. I was only half successful in achieving this in my own poem, as my second stanza is about life after the war, though my first describes what happens during the war. “To His Love” uses a rhyme scheme of ABCBB, which I was able to emulate in my poem. In addition to structure, literary devices employed also add to the universal message the poem conveys. In the original poem, alliteration is used which adds an overall elusive rhythm to the poem. By adding the line, “Must soon somehow set aside”, I employed alliteration which provided a complete ending to my poem. Assonance, seen by consecutive words with vowel sounds “O”, “I” and “E”, are used in “To His Love”, which creates a certain mood to the poem as well. For example, the “O” sounds creates a mournful mood, as well as “E” slowing down the pace of the poem. I tried to recreate this mood in the line “He wrote in his last moments with his own blood”, where the “O” sound is stressed repeatedly. Lastly, perhaps the most effective use of a literary device to communicate a thought in this poem is tone. In “To His Love”, Gurney lets the speaker’s tone control the disquietude underlying the seemingly placid mood of the speaker. The use of “Cover him, cover him soon!” evinces the necessity of covering up the truth in order to prevent people from seeing war for what is really is. Furthermore, at the end of the poem, the speaker states that “that red wet/ Thing I must somehow forget”. However, it is strongly implied through the slightly peevish and vexed tone that such excruciating memories cannot be forgotten so easily. Likewise, in my poem, the need of letting the soldier leave the speaker’s mind is stressed in the last lines, yet through the tone it is evident that this will not be so easily achieved.

 

Through the process of creation of my own poem, I was reminded of the power of language war poets were equipped with which enabled to communicate such powerful messages through their works. It is especially impressive how these poets, many of them having fought in combat themselves, managed to take the time to carefully express their feelings through well crafted poems when presumably they were filled with bursting, overflowing emotions about war they just wanted to spell out. Through emulating the literary techniques found in their these poets’ works, we ourselves can emulate them and find ways to express our thoughts through language as well.