111.11.2023 – life is nothing much

life is nothing much
to lose – young men think it is …
and we, we were young

Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.

Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.

Here dead we lie by AE Housman

According to Wikipedia, “British poetry especially was transformed by the trauma of trench warfare and indiscriminate massacre.

The ‘War Poets’ constitute an imperative presence in modern British literature with significant writers such as Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, David Jones, Ivor Gurney, Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, and Isaac Rosenberg.

Their work, which combined stark realism and bitter irony with a sense of tragic futility, altered the history of English literature.

These scarred survivors reshaped the sensibility of modern verse.”