thevolunteer

The Volunteer - Herbert Asquith

The Volunteer is a pro-war poem written by Herbert Asquith. It is a recruitment poem written two years before world war one but released just before the war began.

Asquith uses imagery to invoke a feeling of greatness and honour. Asquith begins his poem by describing the miserable, mundane life of a clerk, working in a 'city grey'. He opens with the words 'Here lies...' that are normally used to begin writing on a gravestone. This 'epitaph' - style opening gives the idea that the clerk has now passed away and the poem will concentrate on events beforehand. We are told the clerk has spent '...half his life...' doing boring work ('..Toiling at ledgers..'), his days drifting away.

Here lies a clerk who half his life had spent Toiling at ledgers in a city grey, Thinking that so his days would drift away With no lance broken in life's tournament Yet ever 'twixt the books and his bright eyes The gleaming eagles of the legions came, And horsemen, charging under phantom skies, Went thundering past beneath the oriflamme.

And now those waiting dreams are satisfied From twilight to the halls of dawn he went; His lance is broken; but he lies content With that high hour, in which he lived and died. And falling thus, he wants no recompense, Who found his battle in the last resort Nor needs he any hearse to bear him hence, Who goes to join the men of Agincourt.