As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poets’ Corner  

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914 before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed, artists who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other, writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy, writers of not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and the maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets, musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man, that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist, world and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels.

And then the war drums intensified and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for….            

OXFORD IN WAR-TIME


[The Boat Race will not be held this year (1915). The whole of last
year's Oxford Eight and the great majority of the cricket and football
teams are serving the King.]

Under the tow-path past the barges
  Never an eight goes flashing by;
Never a blatant coach on the marge is
  Urging his crew to do or die;
Never the critic we knew enlarges,
  Fluent, on How and Why!

Once by the Iffley Road November
  Welcomed the Football men aglow,
Covered with mud, as you'll remember,
  Eager to vanquish Oxford's foe.
Where are the teams of last December?
  Gone--where they had to go!

Where are her sons who waged at cricket
  Warfare against the foeman-friend?
Far from the Parks, on a harder wicket,
  Still they attack and still defend;
Playing a greater game, they'll stick it,
  Fearless until the end!

Oxford's goodliest children leave her,
  Hastily thrusting books aside;
Still the hurrying weeks bereave her,
  Filling her heart with joy and pride;
Only the thought of you can grieve her,
  You who have fought and died.

_W. Snow_