English Wider Reading

'"Where is Anderson? Still attending McIlwaine? I saw that you know, cut in two. Anderson falling on him as if his body could hold McIlwaine'stogether."'

The man/ will not have much oppourtunity of falling in love with anyone and even if he does, will not be able to say so. But he will need a perpetual nurse.'

'Can't you see it isn't decent,/ to flout and goad men into doing,/ what is not asked of you?'

'The view in turn changes to the same field as it is today: overgrown with grasses and flowers, peaceful, with chirping birds.'

'Ask God what he thinks of a bayonet dripping blood'
'Show God his own image shrapnel'd into paste'
Harold Begbie

'The bruised and swollen clouds'
'The black trees oozed and sweated/ the stinking mud becomes more evilly yellow'
Paul Nash

'Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright/ And crimson roses once again be fair.'
Vera Brittain

'Last year the fields were glad and gay/ This year the fields are trampled and brown/ the tree of life with its fruit and bud is trampled in the mud and blood'
Edith Nesbit

'I knew a man, he was my chum/ but he grew blacker every day/ and would not brush the flies away/ But he grinned nastily, and so I knew/ the worms had got his brains at last.'
Edgwell Rickword

'But the only person she loved is dead: all men are alike to her and it is a matter of indifference whom she marries, so she thinks she may as well marry someone who really needs her.'

'Cover him, cover him soon!/ with thick-set/ memoried flowers/ hide that/thing I must somehow forget.'
Ivor Gurney.

'Troops learned instead that they must HATE the Germans, and KILL as many of them as possible.'
Robert Graves.

'The Bishop tells us: "When the boys come back/ they will not be the same./ "We're none of us the same!" the boys reply,/ "for George's lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind"/ and the Bishop said: "the ways of God are strange.'
Siegfried Sasson

'To march, and fight, and fall, in foreign lands'
John Scott of Amwell (1730-1783)

'The bigness of cannon
is skilful'
e.e. cummings

'We met him last week on our way to the line./ Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead.'
Siegfried Sassoon.

'They won't give in till Prussian rule's been trod/ Under the Heel of England...Are you there?...'
Siegfried Sassoon

'Deep shadow'd from the candle's guttering gold'
Siegfried Sassoon.

'Tingling, wide-eyed, prick-eared, with bristling hair,/ Each sense within the body, crouched aware.'
Wilfrid Gibson

'Night shatters in mid-heaven'
Wilfrid Gibson

'The unshackled skyey pandemonium stuns/ the senses to indifference'
'Night shatters in mid-heaven'
Wilfrid Gibson

'Lock man out from heaven's wonder!/ yet, each evening, grey moths come to mock and conjure it asunder'
'A No Man's Land where little things can creep/ flowers live ensancturied.'
R.H Saulter

'Laugh, oh laugh loud, all ye who long ago/ adventure found'
'On this filthiest backwater of Time's flow/ drift we and rot.'
F.W Harvey

'What bramble thicket this - grown overnight/unflowering'
R.H Saulter

'White tented now,/ the distance marches in a bit'
'Snow comes writhing down to perch on it in great festoons'
R.H Saulter.