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Delphi Complete Works of Charles Sorley
Charles Sorley is unique among the war poets in his precocious recognition of the horror of war, which would only be realised by Owen, Sassoon and Rosenberg after witnessing the Somme. His poetry is ambivalent, ironic and profound. It reveals him as a poet of marked individuality and an extraordinary maturity of mind, when considering he died at the age of twenty in the Battle of Loos in 1915. The Delphi Poets Series offers readers the works of literature’s finest poets, with superior formatting. This volume presents Sorley’s complete works, with related illustrations and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1)
* Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Sorley’s life and works
* Concise introduction to Sorley’s life and poetry
* The complete works, with rare Juvenilia poems appearing here for the first time in digital print
* Excellent formatting of the poems
* Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables
* Easily locate the poems you want to read
* Includes Sorley’s letters and a biography by his parents — spend hours exploring the poet’s personal correspondence
* Ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres
The Life and Poetry of Charles Sorley
Brief Charles Sorley
Complete Works of Charles Sorley
The Poems
List of Poems in Chronological Order
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
The Biography and Letters
The Letters of Charles Sorley
* Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Sorley’s life and works
* Concise introduction to Sorley’s life and poetry
* The complete works, with rare Juvenilia poems appearing here for the first time in digital print
* Excellent formatting of the poems
* Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables
* Easily locate the poems you want to read
* Includes Sorley’s letters and a biography by his parents — spend hours exploring the poet’s personal correspondence
* Ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres
The Life and Poetry of Charles Sorley
Brief Charles Sorley
Complete Works of Charles Sorley
The Poems
List of Poems in Chronological Order
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
The Biography and Letters
The Letters of Charles Sorley
539 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 26, 2022
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 1, 2023
Charles Sorley's too short life ends tragically, his letters I found more interesting than his poems, yet some of them are wonderful. He was indeed an intellectual and quite over my head at times. I found his letters concerning his visit to Germany pre World War 1 enlightening, his liking of Germany yet his dislike in the rise of Germany's nationalism in the youth, that he witnessed at the University. He disliked the war but did his duty.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4985
Officers and men are both suffering equally from staleness. We don’t look like removing for a long time yet on account of our supposed inefficiency. So the passage of days is swift, and nothing to show for it. Somehow one never lives in the future now, only in the past, which is apt to be morbid and begins to make one like an old man. The war is a
Highlight (Yellow) and Note | Location 4987
chasm in time. I do wish that all journalists etc., who say that war is an ennobling purge etc., etc., could be muzzled. It simply makes people unhappy and uncomfortable, if that is a good thing. All illusions about the splendour of war will, I hope, be gone after the war.
➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 78
Due to his time in Germany, Sorley’s attitude toward the war was deeply conflicted. His poetry is ambivalent, ironic and profound. It reveals him as a poet of marked individuality and an extraordinary maturity of mind, when considering he died at the age of twenty.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 132
The Tempest [Believed to have been written when Sorley was aged 10 for a school magazine his sister was helping to prepare]
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 133
The tempest is coming, The sky is so dark, The bee has stopped humming And down flies the lark. The clouds are all uttering Strange words in the sky;
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 136
They are growling and muttering As if they would die. Some forked lightning passes And lights up the place, The plains and the grasses, A glorious space. It is like a story The light in the sky: A moment of glory
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 140
And then it will die. The rain is beginning, The sky is so dark, The bird has stopped singing And down flies the lark.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 318
Of the author personally, and of what he was to his family and his friends, I do not speak. Yet I may quote the phrase used by a German lady in whose house he had been living for three months. “The time with him,” she wrote, “was like a holiday and a feast-day.” Many have felt what she put into words: though it was the graver moods of his mind that, for the most part, sought expression in his poems. I
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 321
may also put on record here the main facts concerning his short life.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 321
He was born at Old Aberdeen on 19th May 1895. His father was then a professor in the University of Aberdeen, and he was of Scottish descent on both sides.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 324
After leaving school he spent a little more than six months in Germany, first at Schwerin in Mecklenburg and afterwards, for the summer session, at the University of Jena. He was on a walking tour on the banks of the Moselle when the European war broke out. He was put in prison at Trier on the 2nd August, but released the same night with orders to leave the country. After some adventures he reached home on the 6th, and at once applied for a commission in the army. He was gazetted Second Lieutenant
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 328
in the Seventh (Service) Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment before the end of the month, Lieutenant in November, and Captain in the following August. He was sent to France with his battalion on 30th May 1915, and served for some months in the trenches round Ploegsteert. Shortly after he had entered upon his life there, a suggestion was made to him about printing a slim volume of verse. But he put the suggestion aside as premature. “Besides,” he added, “this is no time for oliveyards and vineyards, more especially of the small-holdings type. For three years or the duration of the war, let be.” Four months later his warfare was accomplished. His battalion was moved south to take part in the battle of Loos, and he fell on 13th October 1915, in an attack in which the “hair-pin” trench near Hulluch was captured by his company. “Being made perfect in a little while, he fulfilled long years.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 2916
The only objection I have to make is about the absence of shorts: or perhaps I should say (the former might be misunderstood) the rule that nice gentlemanly knickerbockers that conceal the knees must be worn. The three German officers
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 2918
that belong to the club play in their Sunday clothes — boiled shirts, butterflies and spats. They have not yet hit the ball, but are still trying. Now isn’t that delightful? Catch a beastly English officer making a public donkey of himself! I think it is the utter absence of self-consciousness that makes the Germans so much nicer than the English. For just at present, my patriotism is on leave. I cannot imagine a nicer nation. I was coming back from a long walk with the Frau last night and we passed a couple of companies of military returning from a field day of sorts. It is truth that we could hear them a mile off. Were they singing? They were roaring — something glorious and senseless about the Fatherland (in England it would have been contemptible Jingo: it wasn’t in Deutschland), and all the way home we heard the roar, and when they neared the town the echo was tremendous. Two hundred lungs all bellowing. And when I got home, I felt I was a German, and proud to be a German: when the tempest of the singing was at its
Highlight (Yellow) and Note | Location 2925
loudest, I felt that perhaps I could die for Deutschland — and I have never had an inkling of that feeling about England, and never shall. And if the feeling died with the cessation of the singing — well I had it, and it’s the first time I have had the vaguest idea what patriotism meant — and that in a strange land. Nice, isn’t it?
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4936
Lost Across my past imaginings Has dropped a blindness, silent and slow. My eye is bent on other things Than those it once did see and know.
Highlight (Yellow) and Note | Location 4940
I may not think on those dear lands (O far away and long ago!) Where the old battered sign-post stands, And silently the four roads go East, west, south and north, And the cold winter winds do blow. And what the evening will bring forth Is not for me nor you to know!
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4985
Officers and men are both suffering equally from staleness. We don’t look like removing for a long time yet on account of our supposed inefficiency. So the passage of days is swift, and nothing to show for it. Somehow one never lives in the future now, only in the past, which is apt to be morbid and begins to make one like an old man. The war is a
Highlight (Yellow) and Note | Location 4987
chasm in time. I do wish that all journalists etc., who say that war is an ennobling purge etc., etc., could be muzzled. It simply makes people unhappy and uncomfortable, if that is a good thing. All illusions about the splendour of war will, I hope, be gone after the war.
➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 78
Due to his time in Germany, Sorley’s attitude toward the war was deeply conflicted. His poetry is ambivalent, ironic and profound. It reveals him as a poet of marked individuality and an extraordinary maturity of mind, when considering he died at the age of twenty.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 132
The Tempest [Believed to have been written when Sorley was aged 10 for a school magazine his sister was helping to prepare]
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 133
The tempest is coming, The sky is so dark, The bee has stopped humming And down flies the lark. The clouds are all uttering Strange words in the sky;
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 136
They are growling and muttering As if they would die. Some forked lightning passes And lights up the place, The plains and the grasses, A glorious space. It is like a story The light in the sky: A moment of glory
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 140
And then it will die. The rain is beginning, The sky is so dark, The bird has stopped singing And down flies the lark.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 318
Of the author personally, and of what he was to his family and his friends, I do not speak. Yet I may quote the phrase used by a German lady in whose house he had been living for three months. “The time with him,” she wrote, “was like a holiday and a feast-day.” Many have felt what she put into words: though it was the graver moods of his mind that, for the most part, sought expression in his poems. I
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 321
may also put on record here the main facts concerning his short life.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 321
He was born at Old Aberdeen on 19th May 1895. His father was then a professor in the University of Aberdeen, and he was of Scottish descent on both sides.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 324
After leaving school he spent a little more than six months in Germany, first at Schwerin in Mecklenburg and afterwards, for the summer session, at the University of Jena. He was on a walking tour on the banks of the Moselle when the European war broke out. He was put in prison at Trier on the 2nd August, but released the same night with orders to leave the country. After some adventures he reached home on the 6th, and at once applied for a commission in the army. He was gazetted Second Lieutenant
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 328
in the Seventh (Service) Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment before the end of the month, Lieutenant in November, and Captain in the following August. He was sent to France with his battalion on 30th May 1915, and served for some months in the trenches round Ploegsteert. Shortly after he had entered upon his life there, a suggestion was made to him about printing a slim volume of verse. But he put the suggestion aside as premature. “Besides,” he added, “this is no time for oliveyards and vineyards, more especially of the small-holdings type. For three years or the duration of the war, let be.” Four months later his warfare was accomplished. His battalion was moved south to take part in the battle of Loos, and he fell on 13th October 1915, in an attack in which the “hair-pin” trench near Hulluch was captured by his company. “Being made perfect in a little while, he fulfilled long years.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 2916
The only objection I have to make is about the absence of shorts: or perhaps I should say (the former might be misunderstood) the rule that nice gentlemanly knickerbockers that conceal the knees must be worn. The three German officers
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 2918
that belong to the club play in their Sunday clothes — boiled shirts, butterflies and spats. They have not yet hit the ball, but are still trying. Now isn’t that delightful? Catch a beastly English officer making a public donkey of himself! I think it is the utter absence of self-consciousness that makes the Germans so much nicer than the English. For just at present, my patriotism is on leave. I cannot imagine a nicer nation. I was coming back from a long walk with the Frau last night and we passed a couple of companies of military returning from a field day of sorts. It is truth that we could hear them a mile off. Were they singing? They were roaring — something glorious and senseless about the Fatherland (in England it would have been contemptible Jingo: it wasn’t in Deutschland), and all the way home we heard the roar, and when they neared the town the echo was tremendous. Two hundred lungs all bellowing. And when I got home, I felt I was a German, and proud to be a German: when the tempest of the singing was at its
Highlight (Yellow) and Note | Location 2925
loudest, I felt that perhaps I could die for Deutschland — and I have never had an inkling of that feeling about England, and never shall. And if the feeling died with the cessation of the singing — well I had it, and it’s the first time I have had the vaguest idea what patriotism meant — and that in a strange land. Nice, isn’t it?
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4936
Lost Across my past imaginings Has dropped a blindness, silent and slow. My eye is bent on other things Than those it once did see and know.
Highlight (Yellow) and Note | Location 4940
I may not think on those dear lands (O far away and long ago!) Where the old battered sign-post stands, And silently the four roads go East, west, south and north, And the cold winter winds do blow. And what the evening will bring forth Is not for me nor you to know!
Displaying 1 of 1 review