introduction that ‘All noble things are the result of warfare’,^7 butthe essays in this Handbook
offer eloquent testimony to the extent to which modern poetry (and art more
widely) is indebted to war. This may be ‘terrible’ to accept; yet, when Seamus
Heaney quotes Coventry Patmore’s belief that ‘The end of art is peace’,^8 such an
admirable vision does not seem altogether enticing. For who, among the many poets
studied by the contributors to this collection of essays, would ever want art to end?
Yeats, ‘J. M. Synge and the Ireland of His Time’, inEssays and Introductions(Basingstoke: Macmillan,
1961), 321.
Seamus Heaney, ‘The Harvest Bow’, inOpened Ground: Poems 1966–1996(London: Faber, 1998),
184.