Coming soon..."The Great Gatsby"

Happy Students' Day!

Nazi Germany: Hitler's children

Episode I: Seduction

Episode II: Dedication

Episode III: Education

Episode IV: War

Episode V: Sacrifice

War Poetry: The Soldier by Rupert Brooke

The Soldier 

Rupert Brooke, 1887 – 1915

If I should die, think only this of me:

   That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England.  There shall be

   In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

   Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England’s, breathing English air,

   Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

   A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

     Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

   And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

     In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

War Poetry: Break of Day in the Trenches By Isaac Rosenberg

Break of Day in the Trenches  
By Isaac Rosenberg

The darkness crumbles away.

It is the same old druid Time as ever,

Only a live thing leaps my hand,

A queer sardonic rat,

As I pull the parapet’s poppy

To stick behind my ear.

Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew

Your cosmopolitan sympathies.

Now you have touched this English hand

You will do the same to a German

Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure

To cross the sleeping green between.

It seems you inwardly grin as you pass

Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,

Less chanced than you for life,

Bonds to the whims of murder,

Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,

The torn fields of France.

What do you see in our eyes

At the shrieking iron and flame

Hurled through still heavens?

What quaver—what heart aghast?

Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins

Drop, and are ever dropping;

But mine in my ear is safe—

Just a little white with the dust.

War Poetry: Poems by Siegfried Sassoon

The General 

By Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

“Good-morning, good-morning!” the General said

When we met him last week on our way to the line.

Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,

And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.

“He's a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack

As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack

'They'  By Siegfried Sassoon (1917)

       The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back

       'They will not be the same; for they'll have fought

       'In a just cause: they lead the last attack

       'On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought

       'New right to breed an honourable race,

       'They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.'

       'We're none of us the same!' the boys reply.

       'For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;

       'Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;

       'And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find

       'A chap who's served that hasn't found some change

      ' And the Bishop said: 'The ways of God are strange!

IV Jornada de Lengua