Death and the Downs: The Poetry of Charles Hamilton Sorley

by Charles Hamilton Sorley, Brett Rutherford (Introduction)

Robert Graves called Sorley one of the three best poets killed in World War I. Shot by a German sniper in the Battle of Loos, Charles Sorley died at age 20, leaving behind enough poems for a slender volume published by his father in 1915: Marlborough and Other Poems. Several of Sorley's poems have been featured in countless war anthologies, but the poet's complete work was kept in print only until 1932. There was a reprint sometime in the 1980s and then Sorley seems to have been forgotten again. Sorley's nature poems, inspired by English naturalist Richard Jefferies (the British Thoreau), depict the haunted landscape of the Wiltshire Downs, from the days of Roman-occupied Britain to Sorley's own time. As a student at Cambridge, young Sorley was steeped in the classics; he then traveled to Germany to study and was in school there when the War broke out. He was arrested and sent home by the German government, and within days of returning to England, Sorley enlisted. The last set of his poems, written in the battlefield, contain both stark soundings of death, but also a kernel of wisdom and tolerance, as when he addresses a poem to the Germans he cannot bring himself to hate. Perhaps the most poignant poem is one he sent home retelling a key scene from Homer's Odyssey and then assuring his friend that he, too, ten years hence, would be telling his own war stories by the fire. Three months later, Sorley was dead. His last poem, a blistering war sonnet, was sent home to his father in his kit. Sorley's body was never found. This volume includes passages from letters, selected by Sorley's father as illustrative of the themes of the poems in the book. To make this volume more accessible to today's readers (and to students), Brett Rutherford has annotated both the poems and the letters, making clear the numerous classical and Biblical allusion that would have been well-known to Sorley's contemporaries. Some 1903 photos of the Wiltshire landscape have also been added, taken from an edition of Jefferies nature writing. The book was completely re-typeset from the 1932 edition, using typefaces from the World War I era. The book also includes an annotated checklist of the critical reception of Sorley's work from 1915 through 1973, by Larry Uffelman; a biographical sketch of the poet written by his mother for the 1919 Letters of Charles Sorley; additional letters; and juvenilia.

184 pages, Paperback

First published August 2, 2010

About the author

Though his creative output was cut tragically short Charles Hamilton Sorely is among the most acclaimed of the Great War Poets. Born in Aberdeen, Scotland he was educated first at Marlborough College, and then briefly at the University of Jena. It was there his studies were interrupted in August, 1914 by the outbreak of the First World War. After leaving Germany he enlisted in the Suffolk Regiment and was deployed to the Western Front as a lieutenant May, 1915. He was promoted to captain three months later and during the Battle of Loos was felled by a sniper's bullet. His final sonnet: "When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead" was discovered in his kit after his death, and was published posthumously with his other completed work.

Marlborough and Other Poems was published posthumously in January 1916 and immediately became a critical success, with six editions printed that year. His Collected Letters, edited by his parents, were published in 1919.

Poet Laureate John Masefield considered him the greatest poetical loss of the war. Robert Graves wrote a poem in tribute to him entitled: "Sorely's Weather." In 1986 Sorley was commemorated along with 15 other poets of the Great War by a plaque bearing his name in Westminster Abbey.

Reviews

[☄ · Rating 5 out of 5]

next morning, a brilliant july day, i went round to pick up intelligence and met [sorley] on trench patrol. he had just come from breakfasting and was dressed in summer get-up; gum boots, breeches, shirt-sleeves, sambrown belt and pistol. he had a bandage round his head, but only a very slight scratch from a fragment of bomb. he was walking along, reading from his german pocket edition of faust. he told me the whole story of the raid: rather sorry that his plans had been let down just when they might have been so successful; but he took it all in his happy careless fashion.

that's our charlie in a nutshell. god, he was the very best of them 💔