In the early 19th century, with the onset of the "War to end all wars", there was an increase of an exclusive poetry, born in the suffering hands of the 'war poet'. He is often seen in a state of despair and combines the peaceful scenes of the previous century with a sense of extreme grief and depression. It is in the descriptions of the landscape that this fusion is clearest, where the destruction of the peaceful and stable past is evident and where a new sense of misery is observed. World War I left Britain wondering whether the country could ever return to its former state; the nature of politics had been affected by violence in Europe, and the military prosperity that had previously existed was now a mass of shattered morale. Poetry had lost much of its Romantic aspect, with many Georgian poets, such as Rupert Brooke, fighting in the trenches and becoming realists in their work. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay One of Brooke's most important works is the poem "The Soldier", which not only questions the failure of the war on the British side, but also deals with what will become of the landscape. Brooke opens the poem with a speech that; “If I should die, think but this of me: that there is some corner of a foreign field/That will forever be England” (Penguin 2006, p. 108). There is clearly a sense of patriotism in the fact that Brooke would refuse to let any land become foreign while her remains are buried beneath, and it gives a strong sense that the landscape was extremely important to the men fighting the war. It has been suggested that these passionate verses written by Brooke “immortalize the fallen English soldier by appropriating a corner of foreign land” (Grafe and Estanove 2015, p.32). The poet goes on to point out that “In that rich land there will be a richer dust hidden” (Penguin 2006, p. 108), which once again serves to demonstrate Brooke's patriotism but also her acceptance of the possibility of death. Perhaps Brooke understood that if he were a victim of war, his final resting place would be in the surrounding “sea of ​​mud as far as the eye can see.” Mud and barbed wire and deep craters” (Eldridge 2014, p. 76), as the likelihood of recovering a soldier's body and having it buried in England was almost non-existent. The poem however does not provide visual impressions of the trenches, but instead makes use of nature to juxtapose the ugliness of barbed wire and the like; “breathing English air, / Washed by rivers blessed by home suns” (Penguin 2006, p. 108). Providing a more poignant description of his surroundings is Siegfried Sassoon, whose poem "The Rank Stench of Those Bodies Still Torments Me" deals primarily with the corpses that emerge from the ground with each artillery strike. The explosions are described as digging “pitties in the death fields” while the wounded men “wailed in the woods” (Kendall 2013, p. 91). Sassoon can be seen to mirror the destruction of the traditional landscape with the destruction of human life and, particularly with the end of the poem where a soldier is described as lying dead in the mud, there is a sense that at the end of life in the in the trenches there is only nature to hold back and mourn death. Like Brooke, Sassoon seems aware that after death, a soldier has only the surrounding landscapes of the battlefield to acknowledge his existence; this was an exceptionally sad feature of the First World War, in which men had become emotionless at the sight of a dismembered corpse. Sassoon also uses an effective dose ofimages with landscape in this poem; “Radiant water waves the floating sky/Under dark and trembling trees” (ibid). Perhaps Sassoon intends for the reader to observe a confrontation between the miserable trees in the rain and the soldiers below. The soldiers became emotionally strong, like the strength and size of the tree. They resist the harsh climate and have become almost purposeless, solid inside but vulnerable to death. Sassoon presents the trees as “shivering,” and comparable to soldiers, they have no shelter from the cold. Both trees and soldiers fall victim to the effects of enemy gunfire; they are killed this way, often torn to pieces. Through this idea one gets the impression that most of the war soldiers had lost their individuality; they become less known by their names and more by their numbers, like how trees hang together but have no individual identity. Another poem with a strong presence of nature is "The Spring Offensive" by Wilfred Owen, which unlike most of the First World War Poems, are not set in a cold, rainy, depressive atmosphere , but on the side of a quiet hill in spring. The British soldiers are lulled into peace by the gentle breeze and warm rays of the sun, and “breathe as imperturbably as trees” (Penguin 2006, p. 133). Buttercups in the camp are said to stick to their boots as they walk and are personified by Owen as they "blessed with gold" the soldiers about to enter battle. The "May breeze" turns into a "cold gust" and the troops are warned to prepare their weapons; Owen here uses the change in nature as a foreboding message that the peace will soon be broken, and indeed there is a sudden change in the landscape as the men run up the hill. “Instantly all the sky burned/With fury against them” and the “green slopes” of nature (ibid) are replaced with German trenches and broken landscapes. At the end of the conflict, the troops emerge and reunite with the “peaceful air” of the countryside, but they do not speak of the men they lost. It is interesting that Owen presents two different landscapes during one event in the poem. . A deeper reading of this can conclude that war is believed to disrupt the traditional and idealistic nature and is the cause of its alteration. At the end of the poem, the survivors of the battle return to the same fresh landscape as before, and perhaps Owen is attempting to demonstrate that nature always remains the same, unless broken by human conflict. This however does not apply to the individual soldier, because it is known that war has astonishing effects on the human mind and one cannot simply return to the peaceful state before such violence. Here the difference between landscape and soldier is clear; the soldier returns from battle to the same spring hill, but mentally he is not the same. Furthermore, it can be seen that the quiet hillside provides security and protection to the troops; they cannot be harmed unless they travel into the hostile landscape of the trenches, where many lost their lives. Edward Thomas's "As the Team's Head-Brass" is very similar to Owen's masterpiece in that it begins in a typically Georgian scene, but is set during the war. A soldier sits on the branches of an elm tree and watches a plowman with his horses. There is a feeling of tranquility as there is no talk of conflict; there is only humanity at peace with nature. The introduction to this poem highlights the retreat that the Georgian landscape provided for many weary troops. It seems that, for the troops, a peaceful landscape was an opportunity to become human again, as opposed to war machines numbed by their experiences. The farmer asks the speaker if he knows.