To His Love // Ivor Gurney
Only four stanzas long, ‘To His Love’ is, in my opinion, one of the most powerful war poems ever written. This can be attributed in part to subject topic it covers. Gurney chose not to focus on the horrors of the fighting itself, a source of inspiration for many of his contemporaries, but rather the emotional devastation the loss of his love has caused. The bluntness of this work, the acceptance in the opening line that “he’s gone, and all our plans are useless indeed” seems somehow rawer, more real, than any amount of descriptive language could convey. This poem is about loss, and Gurney does not attempt to comment on the justness or lack thereof in the conflict this man has perished in. He recognises that his love died nobly, and hence deserves “violets of pride from the Severn side” to cover his body. The link Gurney makes between the two men’s memories and the nature of his final resting is both subtle and poignant, and adds another layer to a work that already has the ability to provoke a strong emotional response. It is a cruel twist of Gurney’s in the final stanza; to end the poem on a man remembering fondly a loved one while he is honoured would paint an almost uplifting picture. As it is, we learn that the reason for our narrators desire to cover the body has little to do with respecting the dead, but rather a desire to hide the “red wet thing I must somehow forget.” This incredibly graphic description of the mutilated corpse is harrowing, but not as much as the implication that in order to move forward the narrator has decided to forget his love altogether. Having witnessed the importance the memories hold to our narrator, to realise he will have to throw these away in order to get over his loss is arguably the best way possible Gurney could have described how it is to lose the one you’ve given your heart to. This poem is well worth not just reading but studying, and the best example of quality over quantity in poetry.
Words by Jonah Elvidge