Discuss the poem "To his Love" by Ivor Gurney.

Among the World War I poets, Ivor Gurney’s life was
especially sad.  He enlisted in the military in 1915, sustained wounds, was gassed, and
then was discharged from the service. However, the war never left him. He was tormented
with the thought that it was still going on until his death. After the war, Gurney spent
the rest of his life in asylums. 

Gurney’s poem “To His
Love” starts as a traditional elegy lamenting the death of a fallen comrade and apparent
friend. It takes the form of a monologue. 

The poet speaks
to the fiancé or girlfriend of a dead soldier.  He mourns his loss and regrets that
neither he nor the girl will ever have the pleasure of the dead soldier’s company
again. 

The poem takes the form of four stanzas with five
lines each. Each stanza ends with rhyming couplet.  His language is modern and
colloquial.

1st Stanza

The
poet begins with a blunt, sad statement of loss.  He explains that a man has died who
was loved.  The plans that they [the dead, the lover, and the speaker] made are now
worthless.  They will no longer meander through the hills of England where the sheep
graze quietly and pay no attention to anything. Nature and the countryside provide
consoling memories and inspiration, when contrasted to the horrors of
war.

He’s
gone, and all our plans
Are useless indeed.
We’ll walk no more on
Cotswolds

2nd
Stanza

His body was once so agile, fast, and full of life.
 Now he is not the same as he was  when they were sailing in the boat on an English
river,  The poet makes a contrast between the peaceful beautiful scene and the horror of
what has happened to the soldier.

3rd
Stanza

The lover would not know him now.  He died a hero’s
death with nobility. Cover him with  purple violets to show the pride that his love ones
will feel for him. The speaker seems not to want to continue the description of the body
when he is talking to the lover.   

4th
Stanza

The readers are lulled into thinking that “Cover
him, cover him soon” indicates the honorable burial of a fallen soldier.  Instead, the
body is hardly recognizable.  In fact, the poet describes it as “red, wet thing.”   The
narrator hopes that he will someday be able to forget the vision of the shredded, bloody
body. Repression of the memory is the hope of the narrator when he states “…I must
somehow forget.”