Rupert Brooke, who died of sepsis before experiencing combat, is now considered as much a propagandist as a poet.

From Anthem to Elegy

Six gifted young poets signed up to fight in World War I. In their disillusionment, Michael Korda sees a cautionary tale for our time

By Lea Carpenter

Photo Illustration by Chop Choppish Shop

William Shakespeare never fought in a war. And yet every soldier knows Shakespeare’s St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V, the “band of brothers” speech, the one so many veterans cannot recite without emotion. The speech’s power comes not only from the playwright’s language but, perhaps even more, from the fact that the speaker, Henry, knows the cost, and the honor, that come from having seen slaughter up close.

It is from the Prologue in Henry V that Michael Korda takes the title of his new book, Muse of Fire: World War I as Seen Through the Lives of the Soldier Poets: “O, for a muse of fire that would ascend / The brightest heaven of invention! / A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, / And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! / Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, / Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels, / Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire / Crouch for employment.”