Suicide in the Trenches by Siegfried Sassoon Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,

And going to the office in the train.

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,  (a) Why might the soldiers become dreamers? (b) Can you relate these
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, soldiers’ dreams to the suicide described in the preceding poem? Explain.
And whistled early with the lark.
The Next War by Wilfred Owen
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
War’s a joke for me and you,
He put a bullet through his brain.
While we know such dreams are true.
No one spoke of him again.
---SASSOON
...
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Out there, we’ve walked quite friendly up to Death;
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland, ---
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand.
The hell where youth and laughter go.
We’ve sniffed the green thick odour of his breath, ---
Our eyes wept, but our courage didn’t writhe.
 Describe the tone of each of the three stanzas.
He’s spat at us with bullets and he’s coughed
 (a) Identify the “you” in the last stanza. (b) Do you agree with the
Shrapnel. We chorused when he sang aloft;
speaker’s attitude in this stanza? Why or why not?
We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe.

Dreamers by Siegfried Sassoon Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!

Soldiers are citizens of death’s gray land,
Drawing no dividend from time’s tomorrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier’s paid to kick against his powers.
We laughed, knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars; when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death – for Life; not men – for flags.
 (a) Why does the speaker say that Death was never the soldiers’ enemy?
(b) Who, then, was their enemy? (c) What will be different about the
“greater wars” of the future?

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,

And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
 The Unknown Citizen by W. H. Auden
(To JS/07/M/378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation,
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
 (a) Why was no official complaint against the Unknown Citizen (line 2)?
(b) In the next-to-last line we are asked: “Was he free? Was he happy?”
Are these questions answered in the poem? How? (c) Reread the last line
of the poem. Is it true? Explain. (d) In what sort of world would Citizen
JS/07/M/378 merit a marble monument erected by the state? (e) Why is
this poem titled “The Unknown Citizen”- how are we to read the word
“Unknown”?
Who’s Who by W. H. Auden
A shilling life will give you all the facts:
How Father beat him, how he ran away,
What were the struggles of his youth, what acts
Made him the greatest figure of his day:
Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night,
Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea:
Some of the last researchers even write
Love made him weep his pints like you and me.
With all his honours on, he sighed for one
Who, say astonished critics, lived at home;
Did little jobs about the house with skill
And nothing else; could whistle; would sit still
Or potter round the garden; answered some
Of his long marvellous letters but kept none.
 Lines 1-8 of the sonnet deal with the great man; lines 9-14 deal with
someone else. Who might that someone else be? (a) Why might the great
man sigh for him and write “long marvellous letters” to him? (b) Is it in
keeping with the character if the recipient that he kept none of the
letters? Explain. (c) From what the poem implies, what would you say
might have made the great man so great?
An Elementary School Class Room in a Slum by Stephen Spender Azure on their sands, to let their tongues
Run naked into books, the white and green leaves open
Far, far from gusty waves, these children’s faces, The history theirs whose language is the sun.
Like rootless weeds the torn hair round their paleness.
The tall girl with her weighed-down head. The paper-  In the third stanza, what is the meaning of the words: “Shakespeare is
Seeming boy with rat’s eyes. The stunted unlucky heir wicked”; “Tyrol is wicked”?
Of twisted bones, reciting a father’s gnarled disease,  In the last stanza, the speaker points to the possibility of the map
His lesson from his desk. At back of the dim class becoming the window of the classroom and the actual windows breaking.
One unnoted, sweet and young: his eyes live in a dream What does he mean?
Of squirrels’ game, in tree room, other than this.  This poem was written in 1942. (a) How much of it is appropriate today?
(b) What does the extent of its appropriateness tell us about our modern
On sour cream walls, donations. Shakespeare’s head world?
Cloudless at dawn, civilized dome riding all cities. Alone in the Woods by Stevie Smith
Belled, flowery, Tyrolese valley. Open-handed map
Awarding the world its world. And yet, for these Alone in the woods I felt
Children, these windows, not this world, are world, The bitter hostility of the sky and the trees
Where all their future’s painted with a fog, Nature has taught her creatures to hate
A narrow street sealed in with a lead sky, Man that fusses and fumes
Far from the rivers, capes, and stars of words. Unquiet man
As the sap rises in the trees
Surely Shakespeare is wicked, the map a bad example As the sap paints the trees a violent green
With ships and sun and love tempting them to steal– So rises the wrath of Nature’s creatures
For lives that slyly turn in their cramped holes At man
From fog to endless night? On their slag heap, these children So paints the face of Nature a violent green.
Wear skins peeped through by bones and spectacles of steel Nature is sick at man
With mended glass, like bottle bits in slag. Sick at his fuss and fume
Tyrol is wicked; map’s promising a fable: Sick at his agonies
All of their time and space are foggy slum, Sick at his gaudy mind
So blot their maps with slums as big as doom. That drives his body
Ever more quickly
Unless, governor, teacher, inspector, visitor, More and more
This map becomes their window and these windows In the wrong direction.
That open on their lives like crouching tombs
Break, O break open, till they break the town  This poem presents an unusual approach – Nature hating man. Why
And show the children to the fields and all their world might Nature feel as she does?
 What is the “wrong direction” in which man is moving “ever more
quickly”?
 Explain why you agree or disagree with the speaker.

Homage to a Government by Philip Larkin

Next year we are to bring the soldiers home

For lack of money, and it is all right,
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly.
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.

It’s hard to say who wanted it to happen,

But now it’s been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here,
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our minds.

Next year we shall be living in a country

That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it’s a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.

 (a) Is the poem in favour of war and armies of occupation? Explain.

(b) What is meant by the last line? (c) What is the significance of the title?
(d) What is the tone of the poem?