On this grim anniversary, I’m moved to share one of the greatest war poems I know, which was inspired by Genesis 22 and the war that began one hundred years ago today, by most reckonings. The poet, Wilfred Owen, died in that war. He was 25.
“The Parable of the Old Man and the Young”
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
Sermons in Stones 
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August 4, 2014 at 7:05 pm
Karen
That poem took my breath away, it’s so powerful! I hadn’t realized that today was the anniversary of the beginning of WWI. And the anniversary of Hiroshima is coming up next!
I recommend British journalist Robert Fisk’s book, The Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the Middle East, for a deeper understanding of the context of today’s wars.
I take a moment of silence now in memory of the all the victims, both soldiers and civilians, of all the wars of the last century and this one. What a breathtaking slaughter! It’s always the old powerful men who sacrifice the children of their own people in order to sacrifice the children of others. When will they ever learn?
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August 4, 2014 at 9:25 pm
Jeff Briere
Very nice. Here is my favorite poem about WWI. I read it every year on Memorial Day. It’s by Stephen Spender, an Englishman born in 1909.
The Truly Great
I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.
What is precious, is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit.
Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.
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August 4, 2014 at 10:21 pm
Erp
Strictly speaking it is the anniversary of Britain entering the war; the war had already started. It wasn’t just the young who went, my great grandfathers at the age of 42 signed up as did his younger brother who was in his late 30s. The latter was killed in 1917 and my great grandfather wounded and nearly killed in the Dardanelles campaign in 1915. Their cousin, age 50, also signed up and was killed in 1916.
1914 seemed to be a time of war fever (though my great grandfather was well aware of the danger of that, he said that the war would be long, hard, and murderous from the beginning). You are of course correct about the date: on this date, Britain declared itself at war with Germany. It’s hard to say exactly when a war started, but this is the day commemorated by Owen’s homeland, so it seems as good a time to pause in memory and grief as any. It really did devastate a generation (and yes, not only one, Owen’s generational rage notwithstanding).–AZM
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