Poetry anthology context

• The Manhunt


  About Eddie Beddoes

  A peacekeeper in the Bosnian conflict

  Was nearly killed by gunshot

  From his wife's point of view
• Sonnet 43


  Written to her future husband, Robert Browning

  Her father didn't approve

  A personal poem
• London


  Blake was a non-comformist, radical thinker

  Believed he saw visions of God as a child

  Disliked organised religion
• The Soldier


  Written at the start of WW1

  Shows England's patriotic feelings

  Sonnet about his love for his country
• She walks in beauty


  He is a romantic poet

  About Lady Wilmot , his cousin by marriage

  Saw her at a ball

  Admires her beauty
• Cozy Apologia


  Describes her and her husbands relationship

  Defence in the ordinariness of a relationship

  Dedicated to her husband
• Valentine


  Wanted to apply it to all relationships

  Written in free verse

  Shows how realtionships are unique
• A Wife in London


  A criticism of the Boer war

  He saw the human cost of war
• Death of a Naturalist


  Autobiographical poem

  He grew up on a farm in Northern Ireland

  Military imagery reflects the tensions at the time
• Hawk Roosting


  Grew up in a rural setting

  Spent a lot of time outdoors

  The hawk is a metaphor for the way people in power act
• To Autumn


  Initially trained to be surgeon

  Parents died when he was young

  His two brothers died of tuberculosis

  Deep appreciation of nature
• Afternoons


  Observed the coming and goings

  Terrified of marriage

  Lived a life of tangled relationships
• Dulce et Decorum est


  Actually fought in the trenches

  Died a week before the end

  Angry response to the propaganda
• Ozymandias


  A romantic poet

  Believed in emotion rather than reason

  Focuses on the power of nature
• Mametz Wood


  About the Battle of the Somme

  4000 men died

  Farmers still find body parts
• The Prelude


  Memory of childhood

  Orphaned at 13

  Published after he died