{"id":2471,"date":"2015-12-03T12:49:41","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T11:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/warpoets.org.uk\/worldwar1\/?page_id=2471"},"modified":"2015-12-03T12:51:46","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T11:51:46","slug":"unknown-war-poets-louis-b-solomon","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/warpoets.org.uk\/worldwar1\/resources\/unknown-war-poets\/unknown-war-poets-louis-b-solomon\/","title":{"rendered":"Unknown War Poets – Louis B. Solomon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Louis B. Solomon fought in the First World War with the Royal Fusiliers and with the Royal Flying Corps. His poems were published posthumously in 1919 by The Fountains Press under the title Wooden Crosses and Other Poems<\/em>. According to the Newsletter of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship<\/em>, Winter 2013, Solomon was living in the London suburb of Upper Norwood just before the outbreak of war and went to Dulwich College. When he left school he went on to become a motor mechanic.<\/p>\n

According to his obituary in the Jewish Chronicle, it would appear that he joined up early in the war and was killed in April 1918.<\/p>\n

Ypres<\/h3>\n

Thou, Ypres, that once wert queen of Flanders plains,
\nWhat art thou now?\u2014a tumbled heap of dust,
\nWith scarce a wall that stands, nor iron where rust
\nHas not for many a moon more heavy lain.<\/p>\n

The Cloth Hall and Cathedral, once thy pride,
\nThat showed a ceiling lined by master hand,
\nOr raised a tower that lauded all the land,
\nNow lie a mass of ruins side by side.<\/p>\n

And little mounds of earth, which at their head
\nBear little wooden crosses, tell the tale
\nOf those who fought for thee and passed the veil,
\nOf many a myriad of heroic dead.<\/p>\n

Those tree stumps shattered out afar,
\nShell-torn on shell-torn ground, once formed a glade
\nWhere feathered songsters their sweet music made,
\nNor dreamt would war their fervent beauty mar.<\/p>\n

And overhead, where those same birds of song
\nMade fleeting melody with every breath,
\nNow soar aloft machines that token death,
\nThe while they guide the speeding shell along.<\/p>\n

And where he once a lofty solace raised,
\nOr to some humble cottage gave birth,
\nNow, like a skulking rodent \u2018neath the earth,
\nMan builds himself a tunnelled burrow mazed.<\/p>\n

Although Solomon was not a highly significant poet the Oxford Bodleian Library catalogue possesses in its list Wooden Crosses and Other Poems<\/em> by L.B. Solomon, published, albeit privately, at Roehampton in 1918. The Jewish Chronicle\u2019s account of his death mentioned him as the \u2018owner of a keen sense of humour and a knack of versification which must have given a great deal of pleasure to his friends.\u2019 The 2013 Newsletter of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowshi<\/em>p quoted the poem \u2018Ypres\u2019 and suggested that \u2018there is sometimes a powerful, if conventionally expressed, sense of being present at an event and on a scene unparalleled in European experience\u2019. Some of the imagery used by Solomon in the poem does indeed possess a power of observation such as \u2018Those tree stumps shattered out afar \/ Shell-torn on shell-torn ground\u2019.<\/p>\n

It might be worth comparing this poem with Edmund Blunden\u2019s \u2018Les Halles d\u2019Ypres\u2019 which had been written in January 1917.<\/p>\n

Les Halles d\u2019Ypres<\/h3>\n

A tangle of iron rods and spluttered beams,
\nOn brickwork past the skill of a mason to mend:
\nA wall with a bright blue poster\u2014odd as dreams
\nIs the city\u2019s latter end.<\/p>\n

You can read the rest of the poem on the Poetry Nook website http:\/\/www.poetrynook.com\/poem\/halles-dypres-les<\/a><\/p>\n

In his fine new edition of Blunden\u2019s Undertones of War<\/em>, John Greening\u2019s notes point us to chapter XV of this powerful memoir:<\/p>\n

One morning, dark and liquid and wild, Colonel Harrison and a number of us went off in a lorry to reconnoitre in Ypres proper, and to see the trenches we were to hold. The sad Salient lay under a heavy silence, broken here and there by the ponderous muffled thump of trench mortar shells round the line. We passed big houses, one or two, glimmering whitely, life in death; we found light come by the time that we passed the famous Asylum, a red ruin with some gildings and ornaments still surviving. There was in the town itself the same strange silence, and the staring pallor of the streets in that daybreak was unlike anything that I had known. The Middle Ages had here contrived to lurk, and this was their torture at last. We all felt this, and when we got out of the lorry by the Menin Gate (that unlovely hiatus) we scarcely seemed awake and aware.<\/p>\n

Greening, in his notes to what will clearly become the authorized edition of this memoir, points us to both Robyn Marsack\u2019s Selected Poems of Blunden<\/em> and to Paul Fussell\u2019s The Great War and Modern Memory<\/em> noting that both writers \u2018have remarked on Blunden\u2019s use of gilded in Undertones<\/em>\u2019. Referring to the first line of the poem Greening also makes some very valuable points about precise meanings:<\/p>\n

Sputtered can mean \u2018to scatter in small splashes\u2019 or \u2018to fly in small splashes or pieces\u2019, but the more common usage makes the reader think of the inadequacy of language in the face of such destruction. Another meaning (\u2018to scatter ink in writing\u2019) may remind us that Blunden was a life-long user of a steel dip-pen.<\/p>\n

\u2018Les Halles d\u2019Ypres\u2019 is reproduced on a plaque beside the Cloth Hall in Ypres.<\/p>\n

\n

This page contributed by Ian Brinton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Louis B. Solomon fought in the First World War with the Royal Fusiliers and with the Royal Flying Corps. His poems were published posthumously in 1919 by The Fountains Press under the title Wooden Crosses and Other Poems. According to the Newsletter of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship, Winter 2013, Solomon was living in the London  Continue Reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":2466,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n