The Poet and the Battle

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 304, 20 April 1945, Page 8

The Poet and the Battle

A§ music before and after Professor T. D. Adams’ readings of "Battle Scenes in Verse" from 4YA, we heard the Triumphal March from Elgar’s "Caractacus," and Holst’s "Marching Song." While Professor Adams was reading to us about the Battle of Blenheim, I couldn’t help thinking of the difference between the poet of olden time and the poet of to-day. In the early part of the world’s history there was no mental or moral compulsion on the poet to take an actual part in warfare; it was more or less taken for granted that soldiers were there to fight the battles, and poets to write about them. Warfare was conducted on more or less dignified lines, and a poet who actually unsheathed his sword was doing so as a magnificent gesture, the fitting éexpression of it in verse being no less magnificent. Nowadays war is everybody’s business; in a struggle for existence itself the poet doesn’t ask himself what his emotions are before participating, he fights: first and writes about it afterwards, and from the soldier’s point of view. It’s strange that music hasn’t followed suit-both the Elgar and the Holst mentioned above are in so lofty a strain thet, like Marlborough, they ride the whirlwind and direct the storm; but any common soldier who wants something to march to would do better with ‘a-common or garden composer like Eric Coates or John, Phillip Sousa.