War Poetry – Page 5 – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Oxen’

A critical reading of Hardy’s celebrated Christmas poem – by Dr Oliver Tearle

‘The Oxen’ was published on Christmas Eve 1915 in The Times. It is one of Thomas Hardy’s best-loved poems, often anthologised. Below is ‘The Oxen’ with a few words of analysis.

The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
‘Now they are all on their knees,’
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

A Short Analysis of Edward Thomas’s ‘As the Team’s Head Brass’

A critical reading of a classic poem

‘As the Team’s Head Brass’ is one of the best-loved and most widely-anthologised poems by Edward Thomas (1878-1917), who is viewed variously as a Georgian poet and as a poet of the First World War. Thomas wrote ‘As the Team’s Head Brass’ in 1916, focusing on attitudes to the ongoing war expressed by people back home in England, rather than fighting at the front. Below is the poem, and some words of analysis.

A Short Analysis of Wilfred Owen’s ‘Arms and the Boy’

A critical reading of a war poem

‘Arms and the Boy’ is one of the most powerful war poems written by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918). In this post, we analyse Owen’s poem in terms of its overall meaning, but also offer a close reading of the poem’s language and imagery.

Arms and the Boy

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Blue with all malice, like a madman’s flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.

A Summary and Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s ‘In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”‘

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) wrote ‘In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”’ in 1915 when the First World War was raging, and the poem was published in January 1916 in the Saturday Review. The poem is one of Hardy’s most famous and popular war poems. Here we offer a short summary and analysis of ‘In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”’, focusing on its language and meaning.

10 Siegfried Sassoon Poems Everyone Should Read

In this guest post, Grace Freeman chooses ten of the best Sassoon poems

Although I’m interested in all aspects of war poetry, it probably wouldn’t shock anybody to learn (or not to learn, as the case may be) that I’m an Owen girl through and through. He was my first deep—maybe too deep—literary love, he introduced me to what is now one of the biggest passions in my life, and I’ve sometimes struggled to see beyond him and his individual experience of the war. In my youthful obsession (which is still very much present, albeit slightly more under control), I forgot one very important thing: that you can’t have Owen without Sassoon.

The two met at Craiglockhart War Hospital in 1917, where both had been sent for treatment for shell shock—Sassoon as a result of his public protestation of the war.