Thoughts on war: Laurence Binyon – To Women (1914) (Published on 28/09/2026)
To Women
by Laurence Binyon
Your hearts are lifted up, your hearts
That have foreknown the utter price.
Your hearts burn upward like a flame
Of splendour and of sacrifice.
For you, you too, to battle go,
Not with the marching drums and cheers
But in the watch of solitude
And through the boundless night of fears.
Swift, swifter than those hawks of war,
Those threatening wings that pulse the air,
Far as the vanward ranks are set,
You are gone before them, you are there!
And not a shot comes blind with death
And not a stab of steel is pressed
Home, but invisibly it tore
And entered first a woman’s breast.
Amid the thunder of the guns,
The lightnings of the lance and sword
Your hope, your dread, your throbbing pride,
Your infinite passion is outpoured.
From hearts that are as one high heart
Withholding naught from doom and bale
Burningly offered up,–to bleed,
To bear, to break, but not to fail!
(source: Binyon, The Four Years: War Poems Collected and Newly Augmented (1919), p. 40 f.)
You can find more on Laurence Binyon here.
On the blog, you’ll find more poems by English participants in World War I in which they reflect on their experiences there, such as those by MacLeish, McCrae, Brooke, Flint, and Sassoon.
(Head picture: Statue of “Mother Russia”, grieving for her fallen son,
Soviet War Memorial, Schönholzer Heide, Berlin, June 2026)
If you wish to support my work, you can do so here. Many thanks!