| You love us when we’re heroes, home on leave, | |
| Or wounded in a mentionable place. | |
| You worship decorations; you believe | |
| That chivalry redeems the war’s disgrace. | |
| You make us shells. You listen with delight, | |
| By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled. | |
| You crown our distant ardours while we fight, | |
| And mourn our laurelled memories when we’re killed. | |
| You can’t believe that British troops ‘retire’ | |
| When hell’s last horror breaks them, and they run, | |
| Trampling the terrible corpses—blind with blood. | |
| O German mother dreaming by the fire, | |
| While you are knitting socks to send your son | |
His face is trodden deeper in the mud.
This poem was written during World War I, in 1917, by a soldier named Siegfried Sasoon. It is about the ignorance of women about the horrors men are living while they are fighting in the war. It is an ironic and sarcastic poem as it compares the fantasy women think war is like, with the reality of death and suffering in the actual war.
Its structure has no stanzas, it is a sonet. It is described in the octect how british women honour the glory of soldiers who have won medals and have fought bravely, while in the sestet, the soldier resents them and breaks to them how terrible and treacherous war is really like.
I think a powerful image in the poem is where it says
| "O German mother dreaming by the fire, | |
| While you are knitting socks to send your son | |
His face is trodden deeper in the mud.", beacuse it gives a very shocking and real contrast, where peace an tranquility are altered by the image of death and violence. It had an impact because it supported the narrator as he described the poem in a bitter and sarcastic tone, which help emphasize his feelings of anger towards women for being so ignorant about war.
This poem´s title, "Glory of Women" actually describes the irony of how women don´t know anything about war and yet they value heroism won by medals and deaths in famous battles. It is a poem made to express hatred towards women who will never experience the hell soldiers go through. |
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