On a cold November morning in 1861, Julia Ward Howe awoke in her room at Willard's Hotel in Washington, D.C., with verses forming in her mind. She had visited Union Army camps the previous day, witnessing thousands of soldiers preparing for battle while singing "John Brown's Body." Now, in the pre-dawn darkness, words came to her with unusual clarity and force. Rising quietly so as not to disturb her sleeping childre…
“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Political Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Spirituality
Jessie Pope was born on 18 March 1868 in Leicester, England, and died on 14 December 1941, during the second year of another world war. She is remembered chiefly, and controversially, as one of the most conspicuous popular poets of British patriotic verse during the First World War. Yet to reduce her entirely to the recruitment poems that later generations have found disturbing is to overlook the long, energetic, and…
Neighbourhood:
Light Verse Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Fear, Irony, Joy
