Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookpossum
Yes, that poem by John Magee is beautiful - I remember reading it at school. Of course it was a very different experience from that of Sassoon, Owen and Graves, as he was in the air force in WW2 I believe.
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Yes, I agree--it is quite beautiful.
Here's one which deals with an airman in WW1 which perhaps reflects that sense of futility we associate with "The Great War".
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by William Butler Yeats
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
All Poetry gives the following background to the poem:
"The Irish airman in this poem is Major Robert Gregory (1881-1918), only child of Yeats’s friend Lady Augusta Gregory. He was killed on the Italian front. In elegizing him, Yeats focuses on the “lonely impulse of delight” that drove him to enlist in the British Royal Flying Corps and distinguishes his heroic solitude from patriotic duty and other common motivations."