Vera Brittain

Vera Brittain Poems

Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,
And I shall see that still the skies are blue,
And feel once more I do not live in vain,
...

'Four years,' some say consolingly. 'Oh well,
What's that ? You're young. And then it must have been
A very fine experience for you !'
...

Your battle-wounds are scars upon my heart,
Received when in that grand and tragic 'show'
You played your part,
Two years ago,
...

When you have lost your all in a world's upheaval,
Suffered and prayed, and found your prayers were vain,
When love is dead, and hope has no renewal -
These need you still; come back to them again.
...

Ghosts crying down the vistas of the years,
Recalling words
Whose echoes long have died,
And kind moss grown
...

God said, "Men have forgotten Me:
The souls that sleep shall wake again,
And blinded eyes must learn to see."
...

I found in you a holy place apart,
Sublime endurance, God in man revealed,
...

Because you died, I shall not rest again,
But wander ever through the lone world wide,
Seeking the shadow of a dream grown vain
...

Vera Brittain Biography

Vera Mary Brittain (29 December 1893 – 29 March 1970) was an English writer, feminist and pacifist, best remembered as the author of the best-selling 1933 memoir Testament of Youth, recounting her experiences during World War I and the beginning of her journey towards pacifism. Born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Brittain was the daughter of a well-to-do family that owned paper mills in Hanley and Cheddleton. She had an uneventful childhood with her only brother her closest companion. At 18 months her family moved to Macclesfield, Cheshire and when she was 11 they moved again, to Buxton in Derbyshire. From the age of thirteen she attended boarding school at St Monica's, Kingswood in Surrey where her aunt was principal. Studying English Literature at Somerville College, Oxford, she delayed her degree after one year in the summer of 1915 in order to work as a V.A.D. nurse for much of the First World War. Her fiancé Roland Leighton, two other close friends Victor Richardson and Geoffrey Thurlow, and her brother Edward Brittain MC were all killed during the war. Their letters to each other are documented in the book Letters from a Lost Generation. Returning to Oxford after the war to read History, Brittain found it difficult to adjust to life among the postwar generation. It was at this time she met Winifred Holtby, and a close friendship developed with both aspiring to become established on the London literary scene. The bond lasted until Holtby's death in 1935. In 1925 Brittain married George Catlin, a political scientist and philosopher. Their son, John Brittain-Catlin (1927–1987), was an artist painter, businessman, and the author of the autobiography Family Quartet, which appeared in 1987. Their daughter, born in 1930, is the former Labour Cabinet Minister, now Liberal Democrat peer, Shirley Williams. Brittain's first published novel was The Dark Tide (1923). It was not until 1933 that she published Testament of Youth, which was followed by the sequels, Testament of Friendship (1940) – her tribute to and biography of Winifred Holtby – and Testament of Experience (1957), the continuation of her own story, which spanned the years between 1925 and 1950. Vera Brittain wrote from the heart and based many of her novels on actual experiences and actual people. In this regard her novel Honourable Estate (1936) was in part more of a memoir. In the 1920s she became a regular speaker on behalf of the League of Nations Union, but in June 1936 she was invited to speak at a peace rally in Dorchester, where she shared a platform with Dick Sheppard, George Lansbury, Laurence Housman and Donald Soper. Afterwards Sheppard invited her to join the Peace Pledge Union, and following six months' careful reflection she replied in January 1937 to say she would. Later that year Brittain also joined the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship. Her newly found pacifism came to the fore during World War II, when she began the series of Letters to Peacelovers. She was a practical pacifist in the sense that she helped the war effort by working as a fire warden and by travelling around the country raising funds for the Peace Pledge Union's food relief campaign. She was vilified for speaking out against saturation bombing of German cities through her 1944 booklet Massacre by Bombing. Her principled pacifist position was vindicated somewhat when, in 1945, the Nazis' Black Book of 2000 people to be immediately arrested in Britain after a German invasion was shown to include her name. In November 1966 she suffered a fall in a badly lit London street while on the way to a speaking engagement. She fulfilled the engagement but afterwards found she had suffered a fractured left arm and broken little finger of her right hand. These injuries began a physical decline in which her mind became more confused and withdrawn. Vera Brittain never fully got over the death of her brother Edward. When she died in Wimbledon on 29 March 1970, aged 76, her will requested that her ashes be scattered on Edward's grave on the Asiago Plateau in Italy – "...for nearly 50 years much of my heart has been in that Italian village cemetery".Her daughter honoured this request in September 1970.)

The Best Poem Of Vera Brittain

Perhaps (To R.A.L.)

Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,
And I shall see that still the skies are blue,
And feel once more I do not live in vain,
Although bereft of You.

Perhaps the golden meadows at my feet
Will make the sunny hours of spring seem gay,
And I shall find the white May-blossoms sweet,
Though You have passed away.

Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright,
And crimson roses once again be fair,
And autumn harvest fields a rich delight,
Although You are not there.

Perhaps some day I shall not shrink in pain
To see the passing of the dying year,
And listen to Christmas songs again,
Although You cannot hear.'

But though kind Time may many joys renew,
There is one greatest joy I shall not know
Again, because my heart for loss of You
Was broken, long ago.

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Vera Brittain Quotes

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

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