The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (27 page)

sorrows seven:
The seven sorrows of Mary, Christ's mother.

wayworn:
Worn or wearied by travel.

The Dancers

carrion-fly:
Several species of fly are able to feed on rotten flesh (carrion), including the bluebottle and the greenbottle.

‘
I looked up from my writing
'

inditing:
Putting things into literary form.

tattle:
Rapid, careless talk.

Picnic

hurt-berries:
Another name for bilberries, which flourish best on high ground and grow in large amounts on the Surrey hills.

Hurt Wood:
A wood located in Surrey, between Guildford and Dorking (like
Hurt Hill
).

downs:
A series of gently rolling hills.

As the Team's Head-Brass

Team:
A set of animals harnessed together.

Head-Brass:
Decorative polished brass plates placed on a horse's girdle.

fallow:
A ploughed area of farmland left unsown for a period of time.

charlock:
Wild mustard.

share:
The blade of a plough.

The Farmer, 1917

cinctures:
Girdles, or things which encircle or encompass.

Lucky Blighters

‘
They
'

siphilitic:
More usually spelt ‘syphilitic'. An estimated 32 out of every 1,000 soldiers had syphilis by 1917. Social taboo meant that it was a disabling, though infrequently discussed, disease on the Western Front and in Britain.

Portrait of a Coward

Gloucesters:
Soldiers of the Gloucestershire Regiment, with which Gurney served.

In A Soldiers' Hospital I: Pluck

dresser:
Someone who dressed wounds, usually a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurse.

clothes:
Bedclothes.

woodbine:
A cheap brand of untipped cigarette.

In A Soldiers' Hospital II: Gramophone Tunes

‘Where did you get that girl?':
A 1913 music-hall song written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Puck.

Hospital Sanctuary

chaff:
Loose husks of corn left behind after harvesting.

Convalescence

cameo:
A small piece of relief-carving in stone, cut in such a way as to create a light-coloured image on a darker background.

lazuli:
Lapis lazuli – a blue semi-precious stone.

poppies:
The red poppy (
Papaver rhoeas
) flourishes in disturbed ground and was a ubiquitous sight on the Western Front. The practice of selling artificial poppies to raise money for wounded
ex-servicemen immediately after the war resulted in it becoming an internationally recognized symbol of remembrance.

Smile, Smile, Smile

Smile, Smile, Smile:
An allusion to George and Felix Powell's ‘Pack Up Your Troubles', a popular song much favoured by soldiers during the First World War, which begins, ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag, | And smile, smile, smile.'

Yesterday's Mail:
A leading article in the
Daily Mail
for 19 September 1918 referred to society's need to provide decent and comfortable homes for soldiers returning from the war.

Vast Booty:
Piratical or seafaring slang for a large amount of treasure.

The Beau Ideal

Beau Ideal:
Originally the French for ‘ideal beauty', a beau idéal is the perfect embodiment of a principle or quality.

Belvidere Apollos:
The Apollo Belvedere, a Roman copy of a fourth-century-bc Greek statue, which has been displayed in the Pio-Clementine Museum in the Vatican since 1503 and is a byword for male beauty.

maggot:
A whimsical fancy.

tittle:
A tiny amount.

cicatrices:
The scars or impressions left by healed wounds.

who troth with Rose would plight:
Who would wish to marry Rose.

dight:
Clad.

A Child's Nightmare

Morphia:
Morphine, a narcotic extracted from opium, is used as a painkiller and a sedative.

Mental Cases

purgatorial:
Causing mental anguish.

fretted sockets:
Strained eyes.

sloughs:
A slough is both a swamp and also the layer of dead tissue formed on the surface of a wound.

Rucked:
Creased or wrinkled.

rope-knouts:
The knots on the end of a cat-o'-nine-tails, a type of flail used up until the mid nineteenth century to punish sailors.

smote:
Hit.

The Death-Bed

Aqueous:
Watery.

opiate:
A drug from the opium family, known for soporific and painkilling qualities. Opiates are highly addictive and, in this sense, are a drug which relieves someone of their senses.

wraiths:
Things which appear suggestive of a ghost.

5 PEACE
Everyone Sang

‘
When this bloody war is over
'

Sung to the tune of the hymn ‘What a friend we have in Jesus', by Joseph M. Scriven and Charles C. Converse.

civvy:
Civilian.

flue:
The chimney of a stove.

Preparations for Victory

hags:
Dialect for ‘torments' or ‘terrifies'.

jags:
Sharp fragments.

Caliban:
The misshapen son of the witch Sycorax in William Shakespeare's
The Tempest
(1611).

‘
Après la guerre finie
'

Sung to the tune of ‘Sous les Ponts de Paris', by Jean Rodor and Vincent Scotto.

Après la guerre finie:
French for ‘After the war has finished'.

Soldat anglais parti:
‘The English soldier left', though it can also be read as a pun: ‘The English soldier celebrated.'

Mam'selle Fransay boko pleuray:
More properly, ‘Mademoiselle française beaucoup pleurais' or ‘The young Frenchwoman cried a lot.'

It Is Near Toussaints

Toussaints:
All Saints' Day, 1 November – the feast-day in honour of all saints.

Hilaire Belloc:
The essayist, poet and travel writer (1870–1953).

the night of the dead:
2 November – the feast-day for the commemoration of the souls of the dead.

Michael, Nicholas, Maries:
Ancient churches in Gloucester.

the old City:
Gloucester.

no bon:
British soldiers' French for ‘no good', this phrase was widely used on the Western Front to mean not only ‘bad', but also ‘broken' or ‘destroyed'.

Report on Experience

Seraphina:
Blunden may have in mind St Seraphina of San Gimingnano (d. 1253), known for her self-denial and acts of penance as a young girl, or the Blessed Seraphina Sforza of Urbino (1434–78), whose life was one of incessant prayer, especially for the conversion of her wicked husband. However, seraphina are also female members of the highest order of angels.

Eden:
‘And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed' (Genesis 2:8).

lyric:
A short poem intended to be sung.

Dead and Buried

I have borne my cross:
Kennedy uses various scriptural accounts of Christ's crucifixion, death and burial throughout this poem. Here he echoes John 19:17: ‘And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha.'

I was scourged:
Before his crucifixion, Jesus is severely flogged or, as it is called in John 19:1, ‘scourged'.

pierced and bleeding:
In John 19:34, after Jesus has died during his crucifixion, ‘One of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.'

Seine:
The river that runs through Paris. The Paris Peace Conference opened on 12 January 1919. Only Allied leaders were allowed to attend.

brake my legs:
Breaking the legs of the crucified hastened death. According to John 19:33, ‘But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs.'

wrapped my mangled body…perfume:
‘Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury' (John 19:40).

laid it in the tomb:
‘Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus' (John 19:41–2).

Versailles:
The Treaty of Versailles, the peace agreement between Germany and the Allies, was signed on 28 June 1919, and was named after the palace in which it was signed.

made fast the open door:
According to Mark 15:46, the tomb in which Jesus was laid was sealed by rolling a stone across the entrance.

the Council:
See ‘Now the chief priests, and elders, and all the council, sought false witness against Jesus, to put him to death' (Matthew 26:59). Two representatives from each of the ‘Big Five' nations – France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan and the United States – met from the start as the Council of Ten to deal with immediate military and humanitarian problems. This quickly became the forum for most of the significant discussions of territorial questions, and a summit council of four, excluding Japan, was established in March 1919.

the Prince of Peace:
Another name for Christ, from the prophecy in Isaiah 9:6: ‘For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace'.

The Dead and the Living

The Cenotaph

Cenotaph:
The original Cenotaph (named from the Greek for ‘empty tomb') was designed by Edwin Lutyens and built of wood and plaster for use on Peace Day on 19 July 1919. It was re-created in Portland marble in time for the second commemoration of the Armistice, on 11 November 1920.

huckster:
A person ready to make profit from anything, however small.

The Silence

The Silence:
The practice of observing two minutes' silence at 11 a.m. every 11 November commemorates the moment when hostilities ceased on the Western Front in 1918 and the Armistice came into effect. It was instigated in 1919 as a
symbol of remembrance, and has since become an opportunity to remember the dead of all wars.

hoar:
Grey or frosty.

down:
A gently rolling hill.

The Altar of Remembrance:
A poeticism for the Cenotaph.

Mecca:
The spiritual centre of Islam, believed to be the birthplace of the prophet Muhammad, and the direction towards which all Muslims in the world orient their prayer mats. Every Muslim who can afford it is expected to undertake a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in his or her life.

smite:
Strike or deal a blow, often with a sword.

Armistice Day, 1921

Armistice Day:
Armistice Day was first celebrated on 11 November 1919, and is now the day on which the dead of all wars are remembered with two minutes of silence.

arrested:
Halted.

barrel-organs:
Musical instruments in which turning a handle produces a sound. Commonly used by beggars, many of whom after the war were ex-soldiers left without employment.

‘
Out of the Mouths of Babes
–'

‘Out of the Mouths of Babes
–
':
The title is an allusion to Psalms 8.2: ‘Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies'. The phrase also appears in Matthew 21.16: ‘And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?'

ring the cross:
Surround the war memorial, which was often in the shape of a cross.

Memorial Tablet

‘In proud and glorious memory':
A common phrase on many war memorials and gravestones.

Elegy in a Country Churchyard

Elegy in a Country Churchyard:
The title alludes to the poem of the same name, a meditation upon the nature of death and fame, by Thomas Gray (1716–71).

conclave:
A private meeting, especially of cardinals in the Catholic Church electing a new pope.

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

Written after the First Battle of Ypres, in 1914, when the press made much of the distinction between those soldiers who had joined the army before the war and what Housman calls ‘mercenaries' – those soldiers who had volunteered after the outbreak of hostilities.

On Passing the New Menin Gate

Menin Gate:
Designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield, the Menin Gate at Ypres was unveiled on 24 July 1927. Made of French limestone, it lists the 54,900 names of those who fought and died near Ypres and whose bodies were never found. At 8 o'clock each evening the local police stop traffic from passing underneath the gate, and the Last Post is played. This will continue until the Last Post has been played for every man named on the memorial.