Essay
The poem ‘Rain’ by Edward Thomas is an autobiographical poem about a soldier who is to fight in the first World War. The soldier is currently training in the English countryside at the time of writing the poem and is visualising his fate on the battlefield. The rain imagery in this poem sets the themes of death and war and well as the poet’s feelings of sorrow, loneliness and underlying despair .
'Rain' consists of two sentences. For first sentence, poet conveys psychological implications of going to war - isolation, 'solitude', and thus depression.
Second sentence, poet puts himself in comparison with 'others' who do not have to go to war, and in doing so, expresses his preference for death, rather than a life he must suffer.
Edward Thomas uses Iambic Pentameter throughout his poem to create sound. The poem is also very rhythmic, which gives the feeling of continuously falling rain. There are no stanzas and only two sentences, which makes the poem flow quite fluidly. Also, each line has 5 feet which helps to give the poem its rhythm. He plays with the rhythm and intensity of each line through a number of different means, each intended to give a sense of the increasing and decreasing intensity of the rain on the sounding walls of the hut, and the poet’s response to this. To create this effect, Thomas uses repetition, clever internal rhyming and also uses the spondee, a metre where two syllables within a foot have equal weight. Another feature of the poem is that it is a monologue, giving us entry into Thomas’ thoughts in solitude, in which the reader is an implied listener, ‘hearing’ the immediate fears and thoughts of the poet. The poem is also split into 2 parts, but is still contained within one stanza because it revolves around one single metaphor, rain.
There is no room for hope and optimism in war. You are "helpless among the living and the dead", as there is no substantial difference between life and death. In both cases, you suffer tremendously. Thus, he has developed a "love of death", as it is the preferable alternative to a painful life, that the "rain" seems to constantly exacerbate. Thomas is encouraging us to take some time to reflect and show respect to all the soldiers who died during the war, who throughout the war were haunted by the presence of death, fear, suffering and cruelty which surrounded them constantly.
The Flaming Red Sun
By Yuri
As soon as the horn has been blown
My heart is just cold as stone,
The sun! The sun! The flaming red sun!
A sign of the war has already begun.
The hair on my skin are sharp as thorn
All the freedom that I yearn has been burn.
Approaching towards the flaming red sun
Saying goodbye to all the joys and fun,
Is it too much to ask to just go home?
The flaming red sun was the last thing I saw,
My mouth begins to release foam
It has already destroyed my jaw.
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