THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

HOW GLADNESS TURNED INTO BITTERNESS

The impact of the Great War marked the end of Georgian Poetry that was very much in vogue
during the early years of the reign of King George V.

Georgian Poetry refers to the work of a school that was sandwiched between the Victorian era,
with its strict classicism and Modernism, with its strict rejection of pure aestheticism. These works
represent an attempt to wall against the disruptive forces of modern civilization. Their common
features are romanticism, sentimentalism and hedonism. The term Georgian Poetry was first used
of poets when Edward Marsh published the first of a series of five anthologies called Georgian
Poetry in 1912.
In an innocent world that still associated warfare with glorious cavalry charges and the noble
pursuit of heroic ideals the prolonged horrors of the trench warfare were long kept from the
knowledge of the civilians at home, who continued to use the old patriotic slogans and write in
old-fashioned romantic terms of the glories of war.

John Frederick Freeman (1880 – 1929) started working at an insurance company and began to
write poetry when he was eighteen. He published his first volume of poetry Twenty Poems, in
1909 and Fifty Poems in 1911, but his reputation was made with Stone Trees in 1916. He was
part of a circle of Georgian poets.

One of the poems in the volume Stone Trees blatantly reflects the writer's patriotic, romantic
view of war, Happy is England now, which alludes to John Keats' Happy is England (1817).

Hap py is E ngland no w

There is not anything more wonderful

Than a great people moving towards the deep

Of an unguessed and unfeared future; nor

Is aught so dear of all held dear before

As the new passion stirring in their veins

When the destroying Dragon wakes from sleep.

Happy is England now, as never yet!

 And though the sorrows of the slow days fret

Her faithfullest children, grief itself is proud.

Ev’n the warm beauty of this spring and summer

That turns to bitterness turns then to gladness

Since for this England the beloved ones died.

Happy is England in the brave that die

For wrongs not hers and wrongs so sternly hers;

Happy in those that give, give, and endure

The pain that never the new years may cure;

Happy in all her dark woods, green fields, towns,

Her hills and rivers and her chafing sea.

Whate’er was dear before is dearer now.

There’s not a bird singing upon his bough

But sings the sweeter in our English ears:

There’s not a nobleness of heart, hand, brain

But shines the purer; happiest is England now

In those that fight, and watch with pride and tears.

Freeman uses free verse in this patriotic poem to revere England's 'faithfullest children', the
brave soldiers who defy death for 'a wrong not hers and wrongs so sternly hers'.

The poem consists of four six-line stanzas in which the words dear and happy are repetitiously
used, which highlight the writer's opinion of England's moral obligation to enter World War I.

In the first stanza Freeman states that although uncertain of the outcome of this conflict the
people of England are stirred by an innate passion for war when England's forces are summoned.
He uses the metaphor of the 'destroying Dragon' which is reputedly a symbol of (Anglo-Saxon)
England to refer to its glorious and proud history, completely in line with Georgian tradition.

Stanza 2 takes nationalism even further posing that although 'beloved ones died' 'grief itself is
proud'. This stanza is sublimely patriotic because the writer justifies the deaths of the soldiers
using the fact that they died for their country.
 Freeman uses parallelism in line 5 to express this justification, 'That turns to bitterness turns
then to gladness'. One should rejoice at the fact that they died for 'this England'.

The third stanza is the most interesting one. It explicitly explains England's motif for entering
this war. In line two parallelism is again used for a justification, 'For wrongs not hers and wrongs
so sternly hers..' The attention is drawn to the word wrong. Wrong was Germany when they
supported Austria who had murdered Archduke Ferdinand of Austria in Serbia as a reason for
declaring war on Serbia. Wronged was Belgium when it was attacked by Germany although all
the powers had guaranteed Belgian neutrality. It was this attack that brought Britain into this
conflict. In the last line of this stanza he cleverly inserts 'chafing sea' implying the historical
vulnerability of the English shores.

Finally, in the fourth stanza Freeman romantically turns to England's chivalrous past and
meditative countryside. Again he unambiguously states that England is best served by fighting for
a noble cause, 'with pride and tears'.

What distinguishes Freeman from the next poet herein discussed is their status as witness,
combatants. John Freeman, a noncombatant, expressed his view, Wilfred Owen, what he had
witnessed.
“Hideous landscapes, vile noises, foul language and nothing but foul, even from one's own mouth (for
all are devil ridden); everything unnatural, broken, blasted; the distortion of the dead, whose unburiable
bodies sit outside the dug-outs all day, all night, the most execrable sights on earth. In poetry we call
them the most glorious.

But we sit with them all day, all night... and a week later to come back and find them still sitting there,
in motionless groups. THAT is what saps the 'soldiery spirit'.”

From Owen, Collected Letters

Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918) came from a devout Christian background and began working
as a lay assistant to a country vicar. He enlisted 1917 and fought in the Battle of Somme. Owen
invalided out of the Front Line with shell shock, of which horrendous nightmares are
symptomatic, but after recovery returned to the Front. He was killed in action a week before the
war ended.

Owen's lyric Insensibility describes what it takes, or rather costs to be the faithfullest child and
critizes those back home who are in support of England's involvement in the war. He raises his
voice against the ignorance of 'certain poets' and the civilians they falsely hearten.
Insensi bility

I
Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.
Whom no compassion fleers
Or makes their feet
Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
The front line withers,
But they are troops who fade, not flowers
For poets' tearful fooling:
Men, gaps for filling
Losses who might have fought
Longer; but no one bothers.

II

And some cease feeling

Even themselves or for themselves.
Dullness best solves
The tease and doubt of shelling,
And Chance's strange arithmetic
Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.
They keep no check on Armies' decimation.

III

Happy are these who lose imagination:

They have enough to carry with ammunition.
Their spirit drags no pack.
Their old wounds save with cold can not more ache.
Having seen all things red,
Their eyes are rid
Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.
And terror's first constriction over,
Their hearts remain small drawn.
Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle
Now long since ironed,
Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.

IV

Happy the soldier home, with not a notion

How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,
And many sighs are drained.
Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:
His days are worth forgetting more than not.
He sings along the march
 Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,
The long, forlorn, relentless trend
From larger day to huger night.

We wise, who with a thought besmirch

Blood over all our soul,
How should we see our task
But through his blunt and lashless eyes?
Alive, he is not vital overmuch;
Dying, not mortal overmuch;
Nor sad, nor proud,
Nor curious at all.
He cannot tell
Old men's placidity from his.

VI

But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,

That they should be as stones.
Wretched are they, and mean
With paucity that never was simplicity.
By choice they made themselves immune
To pity and whatever mourns in man
Before the last sea and the hapless stars;
Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;
Whatever shares
The eternal reciprocity of tears.

Insensibility is written in free verse and consists of six stanza of unequal length. Owen opens
with the use of metonymies in the first stanza, “Men, gaps for filling/Losses …” dramatizing the
alienation from society once the young men enlisted.

Owen, master of alliteration, onomatopoeia, assonance, half-rhyme, also pioneered pararhyme.

This last, the rhyming of two words with identical or similar consonant but different, stressed
vowels, is displayed in almost every stanza of Insensibility : brothers/bothers, shelling/shilling,
red/rid, drained/trained, shores/shares and it produces effects of dissonance and failure that subtly
reinforces his theme of futility and callousness.

In the first stanza Owen sarcastically opens with the words, “Happy are men who yet before
they are killed/Can let their veins run cold.” drawing the awareness to the discrepancy between
illusion and reality. After which he immediately charges 'certain poets, “But they are troops who
fade, not flowers/For poets' tearful fooling” and knives them down.

In stanzas two and three he laments the impact that war has on 'them', it dulls their souls,
makes them unconcerned and indifferent, ironically even to war's financial rewards.

Owen scolds the pro-war civilians at home, ignorant, arrogant and unaware of the terror and
atrocities their soldiers have to face 'But through his blunt and lashless eyes' in stanzas four and
five. Owen compares old men's placidity to the state these soldiers are in, “Nor sad, nor proud/Nor
curious at all.

Surprisingly, in the last stanza he fiercely – cursed, wretched, mean - condemns those soldiers
who chose to enlist for the want of killing. Owen's last line serves as a warning because nothing
good can ever come out of war, tears beget tears.

Anna Spoor, December 2008