On Active Service: Lament by WW Gibson
This week we're sharing a daily poetry reading from our On Active Service 1914-1918 collection as part of our Armistice commemorations.
Mary White, a Shared Reading group member and Reader Leader took a moment out from the busy day-to-day in the Calderstones Courtyard where our headquarters is based, to read Lament by W.W. Gibson.
Mary also volunteers with The Reader's Knit and Natter group who this year, created a special tribute for the centenary of Armistice which is on display at Calderstones until Tuesday 13 November.
This poem and all the poems we'll be sharing this week is available in a free, downloadable extract from the On Active Service anthology. Find out more.
You can also read along with the poem below.
Lament
We who are left, how shall we look again
Happily on the sun or feel the rain
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudgingly and spent
Their lives for us loved, too, the sun and rain?
A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings –
But we, how shall we turn to little things
And listen to the birds and winds and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?
W.W. Gibson
This week we're commemorating the centenary of the armistice with poetry readings from our anthology On Active Service 1914-1918. We've made a collection of poems from the anthology available as a free digital download so that you can read along at home. Find out more.
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