Wilfred Owen in Scarborough

This past weekend marked the 90th anniversary of the arrival in Scarborough of one one of the most famous war poets.

Wilfred Owen fought on the Western Front but was badly shell-shocked in April 1917 and was first sent to hospital in Edinburgh to recuperate. He arrived in Scarborough around November 23 for light duties with the 5th Reserve Battalion of the Manchester Regiment and reported to the Clarence Gardens Hotel, now know as the Clifton Hotel on 24 November. It was here that he produced some of his best work.

'Miners' is a good example. In his poems he expresses the futility of war, the suffering, the horror and death. The inspiration for 'Miners' came as he gazed into the small coal fire in his room after reading that 140 men and boy miners had died in a pit explosion. This reminded him of the dangerous work of soldiers at the front. Here in Scarborough he drafted, wrote and revised 50 poems plus a number of sonnets and fragments of other poems.

After spending a few months in Scarborough he was posted elsewhere and eventually back to the front where he was killed in an attack on a heavily defended position, near the village of Ors. His grave is in the communal cemetery there with over 60 of his comrades.

Miners

There was a whispering in my hearth,
A sigh of the coal,
Grown wistful of a former earth
It might recall.

I listened for a tale of leaves
And smothered ferns,
Frond-frosts, and the low sly lives
Before the fauns.

My fire might show steam-phantoms simmer
From Time's old cauldron,
Before the birds made nests in summer,
Or men had children.

But the coals were murmuring of their mine,
And moans down there
Of boys that slept wry sleep, and men
Writhing for air.

And I saw white bones in the cinder-shard,
Bones without number.
Many the muscled bodies charred,
And few remember.

I thought of all that worked dark pits
Of war, and died
Digging the rock where Death reputes
Peace lies indeed.

Comforted years will sit soft-chaired,
In rooms of amber;
The years will stretch their hands, well-cheered
By our life's ember;

The centuries will burn rich loads
With which we groaned,
Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids,
While songs are crooned;
But they will not dream of us poor lads,
Left in the ground.