soldier-poets

Updated: July 11, 2025

The soldier-poets were like a general who rushes into the thick of the fight and dies beside a private. We reverence such a man, but we realize that it was not his death, but his plan for the engagement, that saved the day. If such is the poet's conception of his service to mankind, what is his reward? The government of society, he returns. Emerson says,

Elizabeth Atkins - The Poet's Poet : essays on the character and mission of the poet as interpreted in English verse of the last one hundred and fifty years

Ainsi vous disiez tous le climat dont vous êtes, Devant ces arbres morts que vous consideriez, Et moi, voyant tomber tant de jeunes poètes, Hélas, combien de fois j'ai crié: "Les lauriers!" I love it. Yet I don't quite agree with the beautiful turning at the end, because the laurels of the soldier-poets aren't really dead, nor can they ever die.

A. M. (Alice Muriel) Williamson - Everyman's Land