By Dr Oliver Tearle

Previously, we chose some of the greatest state of war poems; now, it'south the turn of peace. Have poets written equally well about peace equally they have well-nigh war?

Although state of war verse has provided an important service (if we can telephone call poetry a 'service' as such) in bringing to light the horror, tragedy, and barbarism of warfare, it's always time to 'give peace a chance', and and so it's of piffling surprise that many poets take written about longing for peace, not knowing peace, or enjoying the sweet joys of peace.

one. Sir Thomas Wyatt, 'I Find No Peace'.

Wyatt (1503-42) was one of the beginning great English poets of the Renaissance – maybe the very first. Writing over half a century earlier Shakespeare, Wyatt helped to popularise Italian verse forms, almost notably the sonnet, in Tudor England. In this postal service we offering a very brief introduction to Sir Thomas Wyatt'southward life, paying detail attention to the well-nigh interesting aspects of his career.

Although Wyatt lived through a turbulent menstruation of English history, which included the Reformation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries, this verse form finds Wyatt describing his lack of inner peace, and the turbulent emotions that rage through his mind:

I find no peace, and all my war is done.
I fearfulness and hope. I burn down and freeze like ice.
I fly to a higher place the wind, yet can I non arise;
And nought I have, and all the earth I season.
That loseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison
And holdeth me not – yet can I scape no wise –
Nor letteth me alive nor die at my device,
And yet of decease it giveth me occasion …

ii. George Herbert, 'Peace'.

Herbert (1593-1633) was a devotional poet, but also a metaphysical one, and his poems carry emotional power as well as intellectual ingenuity. He was i of the greatest poets of the seventeenth century, one of the greatest devotional poets in the English language, and 1 of a group that Samuel Johnson identified equally the 'Metaphysical poets'. Yet his poems almost died with him in 1633, and it was only thanks to his friend'south audio judgment that they saw the calorie-free of day (Herbert recommended that his friend fire the manuscripts of the unpublished poems if he idea them no good). Here, he addresses peace, which is absent from him:

Sugariness Peace, where dost thou dwell? I humbly crave,
Let me one time know.
I sought thee in a underground cave,
And ask'd, if Peace were in that location,
A hollow wind did seem to reply, No:
Go seek elsewhere …

three. Walt Whitman, 'O Lord's day of Real Peace'.

Whitman (1819-92), the American poet who really put gratuitous verse on the literary map, uses his sprawling psalmic lines to meditate on the sun as a beacon of peace in this poem:

O dominicus of real peace! O hastening calorie-free!
O free and extatic! O what I hither, preparing, warble for!
O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and accept his height –
and you also, O my Ideal, volition surely arise!
O so amazing and broad – upwardly there resplendent, darting and burning!
O vision prophetic, stagger'd with weight of light! with pouring glories …

iv. Emily Dickinson, 'I Many Times Thought Peace Had Come up'.

This short Emily Dickinson verse form is brief enough to exist quoted in its entirety here. It'due south virtually the promise of peace, fifty-fifty when peace remains furthermost:

I many times thought Peace had come up
When Peace was far away—
Equally Wrecked Men—deem they sight the Land—
At Eye of the Bounding main—

And struggle slacker—but to prove
Every bit hopelessly as I—
How many the fictitious Shores—
Earlier the Harbor be—

v. W. B. Yeats, 'Peace'.

This poem by the Irish gaelic poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) is short – so brusque, in fact, that like Dickinson'south peace-poem above, it can exist quoted in full hither:

Ah, that Fourth dimension could touch a form
That could show what Homer'south age
Bred to be a hero's wage.
'Were not all her life merely storm
Would not painters paint a form
Of such noble lines,' I said,
'Such a delicate high head,
All that sternness amid amuse,
All that sweetness amid strength?'
Ah, but peace that comes at length,
Came when Time had touched her form.

6. William Carlos Williams, 'Peace on Globe'.

This poem from ane of America'due south greatest modernist poets looks to the stars for its discipline – and, specifically, the constellations. Whilst Orion'due south sword glistens and the serpent writhes, all is peaceful and calm on globe.

The poem, with its recurring refrain to 'sleep condom till tomorrow', might be thought of equally a lullaby.

7. Sara Teasdale, 'Peace'.

Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) was an American lyric poet whose work is often overlooked in discussions of twentieth-century American poetry. Yet at its all-time, Teasdale'due south piece of work has a lyricism and beauty which can rival that of many poets of her time. Hither she meditates on the calm that a deep peace brings:

Peace flows into me
Every bit the tide to the puddle by the shore;
It is mine forevermore,
Information technology ebbs not back similar the bounding main …

8. Rupert Brooke, 'Peace'.

The opening sonnet in the short sequence of poems Brooke wrote under the title '1914', nigh the outbreak of the Showtime World War, this poem reflects the jingoistic spirit that was prevalent at the beginning of that conflict: Brooke sees the state of war as his generation'south fourth dimension to smooth.

Of course, the sonnet has 'not anile well', as we say now; but there are some who now think Brooke was being ironic in these patriotic poems, then it's hard to tell what he himself thought. Still, the bulletin of the verse form seems to be that, paradoxically, war brings a kind of inner peace – a sense of laurels and duty and cocky-worth – which his generation needed, in 'a earth grown sometime and common cold and weary'.

The verse form offers a different take on the thought of 'peace' from other poems in this list, and contains the lines:

Oh! nosotros, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there'southward no sick, no grief, simply slumber has mending,
Zero broken save this trunk, lost simply breath;
Nothing to milkshake the laughing centre's long peace there
But only desperation, and that has catastrophe;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Expiry.

9. Patrick Kavanagh, 'Peace'.

The Irish poet (and novelist) Patrick Kavanagh (1904-67) really should be more widely read exterior of his native country than he is: he was a technical chief of many forms and wrote beautifully nearly the natural world as well as the people of Ireland. In 'Peace', he nearly seems to be channelling the spirit of the nineteenth-century nature poet John Clare.

10. Wendell Berry, 'The Peace of Wild Things'.

Let's conclude this pick of classic peace poems with a more recent instance, from the American poet Wendell Berry (built-in 1934).

Although the juxtaposition of 'peace' with 'wild' in the poem's title sounds almost contradictory, this short lyric powerfully captures the benefits of going among nature to forget out human habit of worrying or despairing virtually the future. Animals lack 'forethought' and don't waste fourth dimension worrying about the future; perhaps nosotros tin learn wisdom from them on that.

The writer of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough Academy. He is the author of, among others,The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers' Journey Through Curiosities of History  andThe Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem.