236 notes to chapter 5
there was no room for swank, typified by expensive funerals. As you might say: No
flowers by compulsion . . . No more parades!” (320).
- Originally published in 1893, Owen’s 1908 reprint included “a new and com-
plete rhyming dictionary”: Brewer, The Art of Versification and the Technicalities of Po-
etry. Owen’s original copy can be found at the English Faculty Library at Oxford
University. - Cf. Penn, Targeting Schools: Drill, Militarism and Imperialism; Lenox and Stur-
rock, The Elements of Physical Education: A Teacher’s Manual; and Roberts, A Nation
in Arms. - Owen and Bell, Wilfred Owen, Collected Letters, 175; Owen, Journey From Ob-
scurity, memoirs of the Owen family; Stallworthy, The Complete Poems and Fragments of
Wilfred Owen. - For Owen’s relationship to Romanticism, see Breen, “Wilfred Owen, ‘Greater
Love’ and Late Romanticism,” 173–83 and Tomlinson, “Strange Meeting in a Strange
Land: Wilfred Owen and Shelley,” 75–95. - Stallworthy, The Complete Poems, 113.
- In his 1917 poem, “The Schoolmistress,” Owen critiques the pedagogical method
of “stamping feet” to the rhythms of “brave days of old” recorded in the poetry chosen
for the English language classroom, like Macaulay’s “Horatius,” from his Lays of An-
cient Rome, a popular schoolroom text. Here, the octave of Owen’s poem mocks the
schoolmistress’s methods of “stamping her feet” (presumably to an exaggerated con-
ception of metrical form), her hands, imitating some naval officer’s “swashing ara-
besque” wave, and how her voice “bleats” like an animal. From her lofty chair she lis-
tens to the schoolchildren memorize the poem by repeating it out loud, but she is
distracted by the presence of soldiers. Her inability to acknowledge the soldiers is
Owen’s comment on the artificiality of these memorized “classic lines” in the context
of modern conflict.
The Schoolmistress
Having, with bold Horatius, stamped her feet
And waved a final swashing arabesque
O’er the brave days of old, she ceased to bleat,
Slapped her Macaulay back upon the desk,
Resumed her calm gaze and her lofty seat.
There, while she heard the classic lines repeat,
Once more the teacher’s face clenched stern;
For through the window, looking on the street,
Three soldiers hailed her. She made no return.
One was called ‘Orace whom she would not greet. (Lewis edition, 141)- Owen and Bell, Wilfred Owen, Collected Letters, 250.
- Reminiscent of Keats, himself: “I think I shall be among the English Poets after
my death” (letter to George and Georgiana, 1818, The Letters of John Keats). I am
grateful to Anne Jamison for this reference. - Owen, Journey From Obscurity, 144.
- Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That, 22.