Sunday WW1 Remembered...

War Poetry written in 1917 became rather more sceptical of the war 

Two Fusiliers

By Robert Graves

And have we done with War at last?

Well, we've been lucky devils both,

And there's no need of pledge or oath

To bind our lovely friendship fast,

By firmer stuff

Close bound enough.

By wire and wood and stake we're bound,

By Fricourt and by Festubert,

By whipping rain, by the sun's glare,

By all the misery and loud sound,

By a Spring day,

By Picard clay.

Show me the two so closely bound

As we, by the wet bond of blood,

By friendship blossoming from mud,

By Death: we faced him, and we found

Beauty in Death,

In dead men, breath.

Robert Graves was an English poet and author of antiquities specialising in classical Greece and Rome. He was soldier and poet during WW1.

His most famous work I, Claudius was published in 1934.



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Sunday War Poet.....

Robert Graves

(1895-1985)

1915

I’ve watched the Seasons passing slow, so slow, 

In the fields between La Bassée and Bethune; 

Primroses and the first warm day of Spring, 

Red poppy floods of June, 

August, and yellowing Autumn, so 

To Winter nights knee-deep in mud or snow, 

And you’ve been everything. 

Dear, you’ve been everything that I most lack 

In these soul-deadening trenches—pictures, books, 

Music, the quiet of an English wood, 

Beautiful comrade-looks, 

The narrow, bouldered mountain-track, 

The broad, full-bosomed ocean, green and black, 

And Peace, and all that’s good. 

Robert Graves was an English poet and author of antiquities specialising in classical Greece and Rome. He was soldier and poet during WW1.

His most famous work I, Claudius was published in 1934.


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