Laurence Binyon (1869–1943)

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Many of us in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada will be familiar with these words, which are still used at Remembrance Services. They come from Binyon's "For the Fallen" which makes up one of the poems in the short collection "Poems of the Great War." As a tribute and remembrance of the dead from the First world war, one imagines that it was written after the war, but this is not the case. It was published in The Times on the 21st September 1914 just a mere 7 weeks after the start of hostilities on August 4th. The British Expeditionary force had suffered losses on the continent and the poem aimed to catch the mood and provide inspiration for the fight ahead.

All the poems in this collection are about the war, many of them providing similar themes; praise for those that were willing to sacrifice their lives for their country, an insistence that they were fighting a noble cause, castigating the Germans for wanting to destroy our civilisation and the need to protect our heritage for future generations. The poems are not empty headed jingoism, they have a depth and sincerity to them that are meant to inspire people to embrace the war effort. They do not shy away from the horrors of war and although at that point Binyon had not seen action he was well aware of the destruction that modern warfare could bring. He is also at pains to praise our allies and in two poems "Louvain" and "At Rheims" he tells of atrocities carried out by the Germans against townspeople and in At Rheims how the French resisted taking revenge against captured German Soldiers. These are the last couple of stanzas from Louvain:

Without a cause, past pardon, fired and tore
The Towers of fame and beauty, while they shot
And butchered the defenceless in the door.
But History shall hang them high to rot

Unburied, in the face of times unborn,
Mankind's abomination and last scorn

Unsurprisingly considering Binyon's academic background I get the feeling that the destruction of fine architecture hurt Binyon as much as the killing of those people "butchered defenceless in the door" . No doubt he was keen to make the point that our very heritage was being destroyed, but perhaps this come over much more strongly than the killing of the townspeople.

From the very first poem "The Fourth Of August" it is clear that a craftsman poet steeped in tradition is at work here. Meticulous rhyming schemes, well worked out metre are everywhere present, but these poems contain a message and they were written to be understood. For example the third stanza of The "Fourth Of August"

For us the glorious dead have striven,
They battled that we might be free
We to their living cause are given;
We arm for men that are to be.

These poems written at the start of the war have not yet been influenced by the horrors of trench warfare and the realities of fighting for ordinary soldiers, but their message is one aimed to uplift the spirit, while recognising that sacrifices will be made. A four star collection.… (meer)