intro poem commentary

Why would someone run over a hill, if they knew they’ll get killed at the top? The poem by Wilfred Owen “Spring Offensive” and the poem “Attack” by Siegfried Sassoon both cope with scenarios such as this one. While both poems speak of war in different ways and through the use of different devices, the two lyric poems have many similarities. Despite the fact that both were written during WWI, Sassoon’s “Attack” is an elegy, while Owens “Spring Offensive” has elegaic elements to it. The main idea portrayed in “Spring Offensive” speaks of man and the destruction he causes through war to nature and the earth, but also himself. “Attack” also speaks of the horrors of the war, and partly mentions how the individual is affected by it. Therefore, the two poems are very alike in content, since both are set during an attack on the front against the enemy, and the horrors this attack and the state of war brings with it. These main ideas are portrayed and displayed in the pieces through mainly imagery, both sensory and figurative, as well as tone, rhetoric, persona, structure and language. Although one may be more present in one of the poems than in the other, both use imagery as their main device to emphasize the horrors of the war, and criticize those that initiate the fighting in the first place.

Haikus

A rich green lawn lies

Sown to the earth, a heavy rug

Tickling my feet

A clear blue surface,

Dancing in trembling circles

The leaf strokes water

In the dry silence,

the willow firmly stands

Another ring richer.

poem

Suicide in the Trenches

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

S. Sassoon

This is an elegy!