Occasional Miscellany: War Poetry Week
b'War Poetry Week on Classic Poetry Aloud will include:\\n\\n\\u2022\\tFrom fears in solitude \\u2013 Coleridge \\n\\u2022\\tThe man with the wooden leg \\u2013 Mansfield\\n\\u2022\\tBalls Bluff \\u2013 Herman Melville\\n\\u2022\\tA speech from Henry V \\u2013 Shakespeare\\n\\u2022\\tThe Soldier \\u2013 Rupert Brooke\\n\\u2022\\tStrange Meeting \\u2013 Wilfred Owen\\n\\u2022\\tAnd, on Sunday, From \\u2018for the fallen\\u2019 by Lawrence Binyon. \\n\\nTo begin with, two poems taken from Kipling\\u2019s \\u2018Epitaphs of the Great War\\u2019, compiled after the war, and one letter, from his son. \\n\\n\\nA Dead Statesman\\n\\nI could not dig: I dared not rob:\\nTherefore I lied to please the mob.\\nNow all my lies are proved untrue\\nAnd I must face the men I slew.\\nWhat tale shall serve me here among\\nMine angry and defrauded young?" \\n\\n\\nThe Last Letter of John Kipling\\n\\nDear F -\\nJust a hurried line as we start off tonight. The front line trenches are nine miles off from here so it wont be a very long march.\\nThis is THE great effort to break through & end the war.\\nThe guns have been going deafeningly all day, without a single stop.\\nWe have to push through at all costs so we won\'t have much time in the trenches, which is great luck.\\nFunny to think one will be in the thick of it tomorrow.\\nOne\'s first experience of shell fire not in the trenches but in the open.\\nThis is one of the advantages of a Flying Division, you have to keep moving.\\nWe marched 18 miles last night in the pouring wet.\\nIt came down in sheets steadily.\\nThey are staking a tremendous lot on this great advancing movement as if it succeeds the war won\'t go on for long.\\nYou have no idea what enormous issues depend on the next few days.\\nThis will be my last letter most likely for some time as we won\'t get any time for writing this next week, but I will try & send Field post cards.\\n\\nWell so long old dears.\\n\\nDear love\\n\\nJohn\\n\\n\\nEpitaph\\nIf any question why we died,\\nTell them, because our fathers lied.'