I have listened to less Ivor Gurney than I probably should, especially since I love the 20th century British composers (including Stanford and Howells), but he was a fine composer of songs, especially of poems by other war poets, like Rupert Brookes and Edward Thomas. He did set a few of his own poems, though, like these:
(More generally, he was a fine composer of art songs. His Five Elizabethan Songs from 1912 are delicious.) His instrumental music is too neglected, and a lot seems to have been lost, alas. His most famous work is probably his Gloucestershire Rhapsody, but more interesting in connection with this poem is his War Elegy:
I used to memorize and orate for a contest when I was in high school - my favorite picks were trench poets, but this one didn't appear on the list of options at the time. I always appreciate finding another. Thanks for sharing it!
I trust the Poetry Foundation and Simon Armitage will not mind me reproducing here Armitage's poem in the mind/ voice of Ivor Gurney. It is such a wonderful piece.
Avalon
By Simon Armitage
To the Metropolitan Police Force, London:
the asylum gates are locked and chained, but undone
by wandering thoughts and the close study of maps.
So from San Francisco, patron city of tramps,
I scribble this note, having overshot Gloucester
by several million strides, having walked on water.
City of sad foghorns and clapboard ziggurats,
of snakes-and-ladders streets and cadged cigarettes,
city of pelicans, fish bones and flaking paint,
of underfoot cable-car wires strained to breaking point ...
I eat little — a beard of grass, a pinch of oats —
let the salt-tide scour and purge me inside and out,
but my mind still phosphoresces with lightning strikes
and I straddle each earthquake, one foot either side
of the fault line, rocking the world’s seesaw.
At dusk, the Golden Gate Bridge is heaven’s seashore:
Truly a beautiful poem, made more so by the circumstances and vision thereof they provide for the reader. Perhaps as one warrior said, the lucky were the dead.
A beautiful poem. The (non-)rhyming you mention with "guns" is interesting. Also interesting is that line 15 ends in another word that has no rhyme -- "that" -- unless you want to (very peripherally) connect it to "doubt" and "rout." It's not an important word in itself, not even a pronoun but a modifier here, so why make it stand out? I love the phrase "divine / Afterglow" and how he tells who their hosts are: "there but boys gave us kind welcome." The hopefulness of the poem -- there are still "human hopeful things" to be connected to, and this will stay with him even in the heat of battle -- is an encouragement to the spirit.
Is Gurney, in the last three lines, referring to a third song not named? One with a particularly beutiful melody to which the Welsh soldiers may have given off-color lines? It almost seems that way.
That's sure what it sounds like, now that you mention it. I was so absorbed in tracking down the named songs that I kind of blipped over that detail, but yes.
Quite possibly, although there are so many beautiful melodies to choose from. But that one is especially well known, and you can readily imagine setting other words to it.
So many of the soldiers wrote poetry. A bibliography from 1978 lists over 2200 British writers with firsthand experience of the war (as soldiers and civilians) who wrote about it. (My source is Hibberd and Onions, "The Winter of the World.") And many of them wrote well, including the soldiers Edward Thomas, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Isaac Rosenberg, Edmund Blunden, and Gurney. In "The First World War: A Complete History," Martin Gilbert makes extensive use of poems to lend emotional weight to his narratives of the battles that evoked the poems and the experiences of the poets who wrote them.
Many of the writers wrote one memorable poem, and in the case of Patrick Shaw-Stewart, we have only a single surviving poem, "I saw a man this morning" (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57324/i-saw-a-man-this-morning). The poem is imbued with the classical education that many English soldiers--schoolboys and university students turned officers--brought to their experience of the war.
Yes. The poets of that war really strike me as emblematic of the sheer waste of lives. One of the reasons I wanted Gurney for today (aside from just loving the poem) is that, unlike Thomas, Owen, and others who didn't survive, he did come home --- yet in such an utterly destroyed state that we can effectively count his life as one of those thrown away.
The fact that the British war leaders were using battle playbooks from the Franco-Prussian and Boer Wars also seems emblematic of . . . a lot.
I have listened to less Ivor Gurney than I probably should, especially since I love the 20th century British composers (including Stanford and Howells), but he was a fine composer of songs, especially of poems by other war poets, like Rupert Brookes and Edward Thomas. He did set a few of his own poems, though, like these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yi9-X9CH44
(More generally, he was a fine composer of art songs. His Five Elizabethan Songs from 1912 are delicious.) His instrumental music is too neglected, and a lot seems to have been lost, alas. His most famous work is probably his Gloucestershire Rhapsody, but more interesting in connection with this poem is his War Elegy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WkFEFCxaUs
It's not nearly as distinctive among trench-warfare-inspired music as Vaughan Williams' 3rd Symphony, for example, but it has some fine moments.
I used to memorize and orate for a contest when I was in high school - my favorite picks were trench poets, but this one didn't appear on the list of options at the time. I always appreciate finding another. Thanks for sharing it!
Thank you. This is a lovely poem. I am so glad to make its acquaintance.
I trust the Poetry Foundation and Simon Armitage will not mind me reproducing here Armitage's poem in the mind/ voice of Ivor Gurney. It is such a wonderful piece.
Avalon
By Simon Armitage
To the Metropolitan Police Force, London:
the asylum gates are locked and chained, but undone
by wandering thoughts and the close study of maps.
So from San Francisco, patron city of tramps,
I scribble this note, having overshot Gloucester
by several million strides, having walked on water.
City of sad foghorns and clapboard ziggurats,
of snakes-and-ladders streets and cadged cigarettes,
city of pelicans, fish bones and flaking paint,
of underfoot cable-car wires strained to breaking point ...
I eat little — a beard of grass, a pinch of oats —
let the salt-tide scour and purge me inside and out,
but my mind still phosphoresces with lightning strikes
and I straddle each earthquake, one foot either side
of the fault line, rocking the world’s seesaw.
At dusk, the Golden Gate Bridge is heaven’s seashore:
I watch boats heading home with the day’s catch
or ferrying souls to glittering Alcatraz,
or I face west and let the Pacific slip
in bloodshot glory over the planet’s lip,
sense the waterfall at the end of the journey.
I am, ever your countryman, Ivor Gurney.
Thank you for posting Ivor Gurney's poem, I should add!
Truly a beautiful poem, made more so by the circumstances and vision thereof they provide for the reader. Perhaps as one warrior said, the lucky were the dead.
A beautiful poem. The (non-)rhyming you mention with "guns" is interesting. Also interesting is that line 15 ends in another word that has no rhyme -- "that" -- unless you want to (very peripherally) connect it to "doubt" and "rout." It's not an important word in itself, not even a pronoun but a modifier here, so why make it stand out? I love the phrase "divine / Afterglow" and how he tells who their hosts are: "there but boys gave us kind welcome." The hopefulness of the poem -- there are still "human hopeful things" to be connected to, and this will stay with him even in the heat of battle -- is an encouragement to the spirit.
Is Gurney, in the last three lines, referring to a third song not named? One with a particularly beutiful melody to which the Welsh soldiers may have given off-color lines? It almost seems that way.
That's sure what it sounds like, now that you mention it. I was so absorbed in tracking down the named songs that I kind of blipped over that detail, but yes.
I suspect, without tracking it down, the parodied song with the beautiful melody is "Ar Hyd y Nos (All Through the Night)."
Quite possibly, although there are so many beautiful melodies to choose from. But that one is especially well known, and you can readily imagine setting other words to it.
The title/refrain suggests the direction of the ribald parody, doesn't it?
All wars are bad. This one was seemed exceptionally bad.
Its horrors remain peculiarly vivid, more than a century on and with more wars in our hindsight.
So many of the soldiers wrote poetry. A bibliography from 1978 lists over 2200 British writers with firsthand experience of the war (as soldiers and civilians) who wrote about it. (My source is Hibberd and Onions, "The Winter of the World.") And many of them wrote well, including the soldiers Edward Thomas, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Isaac Rosenberg, Edmund Blunden, and Gurney. In "The First World War: A Complete History," Martin Gilbert makes extensive use of poems to lend emotional weight to his narratives of the battles that evoked the poems and the experiences of the poets who wrote them.
Many of the writers wrote one memorable poem, and in the case of Patrick Shaw-Stewart, we have only a single surviving poem, "I saw a man this morning" (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57324/i-saw-a-man-this-morning). The poem is imbued with the classical education that many English soldiers--schoolboys and university students turned officers--brought to their experience of the war.
Yes. The poets of that war really strike me as emblematic of the sheer waste of lives. One of the reasons I wanted Gurney for today (aside from just loving the poem) is that, unlike Thomas, Owen, and others who didn't survive, he did come home --- yet in such an utterly destroyed state that we can effectively count his life as one of those thrown away.
The fact that the British war leaders were using battle playbooks from the Franco-Prussian and Boer Wars also seems emblematic of . . . a lot.