On the Idle Hill, The Drum and Drummer Hodge Essay

Poets often write numberss to carry their ideas, opinions, emotions and experiences of life. Choose three poesys you fork up studied to interpret how writers have been influenced by the events of state of war. war, in any(prenominal) shape or habitus, affects heap in many different ways. Many volume choose to express their feelings and experiences of war in meters. The three numberss I have chosen either have different moods, structures and pulsations but their meanings argon all the same war is ruthless terrifying and redundant.The poem On the Idle Hill is by A.E. Housman. Housman wrote the poem in 1896 and he was not writing nearly any particular war but just the crime of battle in general. Housman never partook in any war but heard nearly the terror of it from other peoples experiences. The inaugural stanza portrays a peaceful, happy, tender scene. Words such as summer, sleepy and streams emphasise this. However, the stimulate drummer cuts through this peac eful atmosphere. It is the sound of the army coming, looking for new recruits to go to war with them. The first stanza seems to be just some the drum and how it calls people to war and tears them away from their homes. The line quiverming like a make noise in dreams.makes the drum seem like a nightmargon, something e genuinelyone dreads.In the assist stanza, the tone is a lot condemnableder and darker. The phrases, Far and near and low and louder atomic number 18 conjure uping that war is everywhere, and can be seen in different levels all everywhere the world. Probably one of the most striking and powerful lines in the poem, near to friends and food for powderis very shocking and adds a more private theme to the poem, because the soldiers are now being seen as friends, fathers and real people instead of just toys in war. The powder is gunpowder so the poet is hinting at the particular that the men are just food for the war. The war is do to sound like a real living thing this is a commodity exercise of personification. The net line of stanza two,Soldiers marching, all to die.is depressing and it emphasises the rashness and horror of war.Stanza three maintains the sad, depressing tone. There is more powerful and brilliant imagery such as, bl separately the bones, which is very sinister and shocking, and, of comrades bump off. Slain does not just mean killed, it means murdered and it outlines the savageness of war. Another graphic phrase is,Lovely lads and dead and rotten.These are contrasting images, and the writer is trying to put the idea across that innocent, good people can be killed in war for no reason. The last-place line of the stanza,None that go return again.sums up A.E. Housmans public opinion on war that it is just something which takes the lives of anyone who squeezes in it and has no point whatsoever.The hoar in On the Idle Hill is abab and it keeps a slow, steady rhythm passim the poem, giving a sad, melancholy tone to th e poem. The form in which the writer has set out the poem, in four stanzas, is effective because each one talks about a different aspect of war. This poem shows A.E. Housmans hatred of battle and how pointless and ruthless he thinks it is. War has obviously effected him deeply and we can see from his language throughout the poem that he feels very strongly about it.The poem The Drum was compose by John Scott, who was a supporter. The significance of this is that according to Quaker beliefs, he was a pacifist and so was completely against war and violence. His poem concentrates on the famous recruitment drum which called people to was. He opens the poem directly by saying,I hate that drums divisive sound,.We immediately jazz what Scotts feelings about war are he hates it. Even the rhythm is drum-like, as seen in the repetition of the word lot. This has a hypnotic effect, just like the drum was to knew recruits. Scott is bitter about the drum and criticises its ability to hypnoti se adolescent men, as seen in the phrase,To unthoughtful youth it pleasure yields.The poet is saying that the drum almost takes advantage of the young men. The next two lines,To sell their liberty for charmsOf tawdry lace, and seem arms.are suggesting that was takes your freedom for something material and worthless, the uniform and the weapons. The poets thoughts here are that was whitethorn seem exciting and a chance to be a submarine sandwich but it is really taking your freedom and life. Scott uses the quarrel tawdry, charms, and glittering to create an image of honour and glory. In the following line, Scott makes the word opposition seem like a person this is a good example of personification. He is stressing the fact that Ambition, or the war officers, only have to give one order to send you to your death. The final line of stanza one,To march, and fight, and transcend in foreign lands.is used by the poet to tell us that in war, you are always matching to die.Stanza two begins with the same two lines as stanza one, with the hypnotic repetition of the word round. The poet now puts his personal feelings into the poem by saying To me it speaks. He uses powerful imagery, as seen in the words ravaged, burning and ruined, to create a scene of final stage and death. Also, words such as mangled and dying provoke horror and terror in the readers mind. The following line,And widows tears and orphans moans.is depressing and it shows the aftermath of war the families ruined. The final two lines,And all that Miserys hand bestows,To fill the muniment of human woes.are summing up Scotts view on war, it is terrible, destructive, pointless and terrifying. Again, he uses personification and makes Misery seem like a person.The form in which The Drum is set out is quite effective the first stanza is about the recruitment of men and the pointlessness of war and the second is about the aftermath and the death. The rhyming scheme abab is used throughout the poem and it is drum-like in sound, which is very fitting to the subject of the poem. In summary, The Drum shows John Scotts hatred of war. Being a pacifist, he obviously did not fight in any wars but he knew enough about them to know of the destruction and death which came with them. He has written the poem to express his views on war and also to try and dissuade people from going to them.Drummer Hodge was written by Thomas Hardy after he read about a local drummer boy who had been killed at war. He thought how sad it was that a young boy, who didnt know the horror of war, should be hide in an alien landscape so far from home. The boy died in the Boer War (1899-1902), which took place in South Africa.The poem has a very pessimistic, sad tone. The first stanza is about how the young boy is buried. The phrases they throw and uncoffined suggest to us that no thought was put into his burial and he had no proper funeral. He wasnt even given the luxury of a wooden box, he was just thrown into a hole. Hardy emphasises the fact that he is miles away from home with the phrase foreign constellations. The reader feels miserable for the poor boy, buried away from everything familiar to him.