Mametz Wood by Owen Sheers

Today's poem is Mametz Wood by Owen Sheers.
It describes the uncovering (in 2005) of a mass graves of soldiers buried in 1916.

The following images summarise the poem:

First, we see Mametz Wood in 1916 - destroyed.

Secondly, we see Mametz Wood as it is today - it appears to have recovered and the war is forgotten.

Finally, we see the grave of men who died in 1916, but were uncovered in 2005. This shows that, even though the war seems to have been forgotten, it still affects us.

Now use the link to revise the poem.

Use these headings to prepare your page for what you will learn.

•Content (what is the poem about?):

•Context (what was happening at the time?):

•Language:

1.

2.

3.

•Structure:

1.

2.

•Poet’s ideas/aim/thoughts:

•Effect on the reader:

Mametz Wood 

For years afterwards the farmers found them –
the wasted young, turning up under their plough blades
as they tended the land back into itself.

A chit of bone, the china plate of a shoulder blade,
the relic of a finger, the blown
and broken bird’s egg of a skull,

all mimicked now in flint, breaking blue in white
across this field where they were told to walk, not run,
towards the wood and its nesting machine guns.

And even now the earth stands sentinel,
reaching back into itself for reminders of what happened
like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin.

This morning, twenty men buried in one long grave,
a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm,
their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre

in boots that outlasted them,
their socketed heads tilted back at an angle
and their jaws, those that have them, dropped open.

As if the notes they had sung
have only now, with this unearthing,
slipped from their absent tongues.

By Owen Sheers

Mametz Wood

Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

Today's poem is an extreme contrast to The Soldier by Rupert Brooke.
Dulce et Decorum Est was written in 1916, at the height of WWI and following two years of brutal and bloody trench warfare.

This date is very important, because of what happened between 1914 (Brooke wrote The Soldier) and 1916 (Owen wrote Dulce).

This poem is an excellent example of how the mood and tone of the poem can be different. The MOOD in Dulce is definitely one of sadness: a man dies in the poem.
However, the TONE of the poem is angry as Owen vents his frustration on those responsible for deceitful propaganda.

If you've already studied the poem, write down as much as you can under the following headings, before watching the video.

If you don't know the poem at all, then use the same headings to prepare your page for what you will learn.

•Content (what is the poem about?):

•Context (what was happening at the time?):

•Language:

1.

2.

3.

•Structure:

1.

2.

•Poet’s ideas/aim/thoughts:

•Effect on the reader:

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime...

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. 

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

By Wilfred Owen

Dulce et Decorum Est

The Soldier by Rupert Brooke

Print out a copy of the poem and then use the link at the bottom to watch a short video about the poem.

Remember to pause the video and take notes.

If you have studied the poem before, pause the video (when I tell you) and test yourself on what you remember.

The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:
    That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
    In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
    Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
    Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
    A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
      Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
    And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
      In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

By Rupert Brooke

The Soldier

Welcome

Hi
While we are off school, you will be able to find some links here to resources and learning opportunities.
I hope you find them useful.
Mr M