First World War
On graduation Cynan joined the Welsh Student Company of the RAMC, serving in Salonika and France serving initially as an ambulance man and then as the company's pastor. His wartime experience had a profound effect on his poetic works, to such an extent that Alan Llwyd claims that Cynan, not Hedd Wyn, is the premier Welsh war poet of the First World War. Hedd Wyn's poems relating to the war were written before he had enlisted and he was killed before he could recount his experience of the war in his muse. Cynan, however, gives the best descriptions of the gritty atrocities of war, and the impact of war on a man's body as well as his spirit.
Read more about this topic: Albert Evans-Jones
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“The rhetorician would deceive his neighbours,
The sentimentalist himself; while art
Is but a vision of reality.
What portion in the world can the artist have
Who has awakened from the common dream
But dissipation and despair?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The trumpets sound, the banners fly,
The glittering spears are ranked ready;
The shouts o’ war are heard afar,
The battle closes thick and bloody;
But it’s no the roar o’ sea or shore
Wad mak me langer wish to tarry;
Nor shout o’ war that’s heard afar,
Its leaving thee, my bonnie Mary.”
—Robert Burns (1759–1796)