Evidence: | 'I have been trying to think how far I and my like, middle class schoolboys at the end of our pre-war education, were unquestioning patriots ready to respond to heroics. I think it is true that we were. We were reading now, or having read to us by our English master, the newly published sonnets of Rupert Brooke: 'Now, God be thanked who has matched us with His hour / And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleep.' 'Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead.' and 'Honour has come back, as a king, to earth.' 'If I should die, think only this of me: / That there's some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England.' We had been prepared for these heights: conditioned may be the right word. Tennyson and Browning (besides Shakespeare, of course) we read in the English lessons and learnt by heart; and it cannot be by chance that there comes to my mind unbidden 'Ulysses' - 'To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield' and the well-known 'Epilogue to Asolando':
One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.' |
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Century: | 1900-1945 | ||||||||||
Date: | Between 1 Jan 1910 and 1 Jan 1914 | ||||||||||
Country: | England | ||||||||||
Time: | daytime: school hours | ||||||||||
Place: | city: Berkhamsted specific address: Berkhamsted School location in dwelling: classroom |
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Type of Experience (Reader): |
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Type of Experience (Listener): |
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Reader: | Harold Edward Leslie Mellersh |
Age | Child (0-17) |
Gender | Male |
Date of Birth | 1897 |
Socio-economic group: | Professional / academic / merchant / farmer |
Occupation: | schoolboy |
Religion: | Anglican |
Country of origin: | England |
Country of experience: | England |
Listeners present if any: (e.g. family, servants,
friends, workmates) |
classmates |
Additional comments: | n/a |
Author: | William Shakespeare |
Title: | n/a |
Genre: | Poetry |
Form of Text: | Print: Book |
Publication details: | n/a |
Provenance: | unknown School textbook - probably owned. |
Record ID: | 26981 | |
Source - | ||
Author: | Harold Edward Leslie Mellersh | |
Editor: | n/a | |
Title: | Schoolboy into War | |
Place of Publication: | London | |
Date of Publication: | 1978 | |
Vol: | n/a | |
Page: | 26 | |
Additional comments: | n/a |
Citation: | Harold Edward Leslie Mellersh, Schoolboy into War (London, 1978), p. 26, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=26981, accessed: 30 November 2023 |
This is an autobiographical report (1978) of a school reading/listening experience (1910-1914). |
Reading Experience Database version 2.0. Page updated: 27th Apr 2016 3:15pm (GMT)