The War Films - Sir Henry Newbolt.

This is an excellent poem by Sir Henry Newbolt, not his most famous but it captures something of the people at the home seeing the men in action. You could imagine a packed cinema watching Malins “The Somme.”

The War Films

O living pictures of the dead,
O songs without a sound,
O fellowship whose phantom tread
Hallows a phantom ground --
How in a gleam have these revealed
The faith we had not found.

We have sought God in a cloudy Heaven,
We have passed by God on earth:
His seven sins and his sorrows seven,
His wayworn mood and mirth,
Like a ragged cloak have hid from us
The secret of his birth.

Brother of men, when now I see
The lads go forth in line,
Thou knowest my heart is hungry in me
As for thy bread and wine;
Thou knowest my heart is bowed in me
To take their death for mine.


(Sir Henry John Newbolt, (6 June 1862 – 19 April 1938) was an English poet. He is best remembered for Vitaï Lampada, a lyrical piece used for propaganda purposes during the First World War.

Written in 1897 about a schoolboy cricketer who grows up to fight in Africa, Vitai Lampada. There, in the panic of battle the boy is stirred to heroic action by schooldays memories: “his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote - / Play up! Play up! And play the game!”

“Play up! Play up! And play the game!” – words that have become famous through the years - symbolised Newbolt’s view that war should be fought in the same spirit as school sports. The poem was well received both critically and publicly at the time, and his work underwent a further revival at the outbreak of the First World War, when optimism was high; however as gloom set in, Newbolt’s verse consequently suffered in popularity.)