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Saturday 28 August 1915 – Laurence Binyon, poet, author of ‘For the Fallen’

Category World War I: The Home Front
Publication
The Evesham Journal
Transcription of article

MR LAURENCE BINYON

Under the heading “Authors on Service”, Mr Francis Bickley contributes a most interesting article to “T.P.’s Weekly” on Mr Laurence Binyon, son of the late Rev. F. Binyon, of Winchcombe, and brother of  Mr C. A. Binyon, of Badsey. Having briefly sketched Mr Binyon’s early literary career, Mr Bickley goes on:

“The contents of these early volumes are mainly of the reflective order of lyric. Though indefinably tinged with the spirit of the age, Mr Binyon had little in common with his nearest contemporaries. He had learned nothing from the French decadents and symbolists and such mysticism as there is in his poetry comes from a deep contemplation of nature, not from any cabalistic studies. He is at his best in the larger more solid and more sombre lyrical forms like the ode to ‘Youth’. His ‘Ode for September’ is one of the few really fine pieces of literature evoked by the present war.”

Mr Bickley goes on to trace Mr Binyon’s career, and makes special reference to the dramatic uses the poet has put his mastery of blank verse, and then says:

“As we have already noted, Mr Binyon’s gift has grown with the years. Not only is his workmanship richer and more accomplished, he has come to have a deeper vision and a wider sympathy, what one may describe as a more mystical apprehension of both man and nature.” Mr Binyon is now working night and day in a hospital in France.

Comments

“T.P.'s Weekly” was a popular and cheap British literary magazine founded by the radical MP and publisher, T.P. O'Connor, in 1902 with the aim of bringing literature to the masses.

‘Ode for September’ is more popularly known as ‘For the Fallen’, written in September 1914 and published in The Times.  In 1915, despite being too old to enlist, Laurence Binyon volunteered at a British hospital for French soldiers.