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3.31 AVERAGE
3.31 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
"1916 seen from 1921"
Tired with dull grief, grown old before my day,
I sit in solitude and only hear
Long silent laughters, murmurings of dismay,
The lost intensities of hope and fear;
In those old marshes yet the rifles lie,
On the thin breastwork flutter the grey rags,
The very books I read are there—and I
Dead as the men I loved, wait while life drags
Its wounded length from those sad streets of war
Into green places here, that were my own;
But now what once was mine is mine no more,
I seek such neighbours here and I find none.
With such strong gentleness and tireless will
Those ruined houses seared themselves in me,
Passionate I look for their dumb story still,
And the charred stub outspeaks the living tree.
I rise up at the singing of a bird
And scarcely knowing slink along the lane,
I dare not give a soul a look or word
Where all have homes and none’s at home in vain:
Deep red the rose burned in the grim redoubt,
The self-sown wheat around was like a flood,
In the hot path the lizard lolled time out,
The saints in broken shrines were bright as blood.
Sweet Mary’s shrine between the sycamores!
There we would go, my friend of friends and I,
And snatch long moments from the grudging wars,
Whose dark made light intense to see them by.
Shrewd bit the morning fog, the whining shots
Spun from the wrangling wire: then in warm swoon
The sun hushed all but the cool orchard plots,
We crept in the tall grass and slept till noon.
Tired with dull grief, grown old before my day,
I sit in solitude and only hear
Long silent laughters, murmurings of dismay,
The lost intensities of hope and fear;
In those old marshes yet the rifles lie,
On the thin breastwork flutter the grey rags,
The very books I read are there—and I
Dead as the men I loved, wait while life drags
Its wounded length from those sad streets of war
Into green places here, that were my own;
But now what once was mine is mine no more,
I seek such neighbours here and I find none.
With such strong gentleness and tireless will
Those ruined houses seared themselves in me,
Passionate I look for their dumb story still,
And the charred stub outspeaks the living tree.
I rise up at the singing of a bird
And scarcely knowing slink along the lane,
I dare not give a soul a look or word
Where all have homes and none’s at home in vain:
Deep red the rose burned in the grim redoubt,
The self-sown wheat around was like a flood,
In the hot path the lizard lolled time out,
The saints in broken shrines were bright as blood.
Sweet Mary’s shrine between the sycamores!
There we would go, my friend of friends and I,
And snatch long moments from the grudging wars,
Whose dark made light intense to see them by.
Shrewd bit the morning fog, the whining shots
Spun from the wrangling wire: then in warm swoon
The sun hushed all but the cool orchard plots,
We crept in the tall grass and slept till noon.
Blunden's autobiography, with a small selection of his poems in the back, was my companion on a two-week trip to Ypres and the Somme. It captured, in a way that no guidebook or museum could, the tediousness and randomness of life on the Western Front with all its terrifying sounds and smells and brief interludes of strangely normal existence behind the lines.
challenging
dark
informative
medium-paced
informative
slow-paced
My main problem with this book is that Robert Graves set the war memoir bar so high with Goodbye To All That that anything else pales in comparison.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
I really struggled with this book. But I was determined to get to the end. Firstly, the book is turgid and tedious. I am sure that life in the trenches was terrible but Blunden doesn’t really convey that terror. His narrative is disjointed and he just moves from one boring episode to the next. He never takes time to flesh out the characters he meets. The only saving grace for this edition are his poems at the end.
This book was not really for me!
This book was not really for me!
dark
reflective
slow-paced