Analysis Of The Poem 'The Measure' By Dame Mary Gilmore

Dame Mary Gilmore - The Measure: Analysis

“I have grown past hate and bitterness; I see the world as one,” Dame Mary Gilmore, Nationality

The First World War is the first war Australia had been involved in, and consequently, a feeling of excitement and patriotism swept the nation. Some poets took to writing about the glory and romanticism of the war, while others wrote poems as a form of passive resistance and defiance towards the war. [Olsen, 2013] One of the most influential Australian anti-war poets was Dame Mary Gilmore, who wrote poetry that revealed the harsh realities of the war, and questioned its essentiality. It was through the tragic and melancholy scenarios depicted in her poetry that Gilmore was able to inspire pity in readers,

In lines 1 and 2 of stanza 1, Gilmore uses hyperbole in order to grasp the attention of the reader. “Must the young blood for ever flow? Shall the wide wounds no closing know?” In doing this, Gilmore immediately poses the question of war’s necessity to the reader. She questions whether the ‘young blood’ must forever flow, metaphorically representing the young and underage men who fought and were killed in battle. This poses a question to the reader: Should our young men continue to die in the war? In the next line, Gilmore again questions the reader: “Shall the wide wounds no closing know?” She asks whether the ‘wounds’ will ever know closure. This line is ambiguous, and is a metaphor for several things. The first of which is the physical wounds caused by the war, that caused the ‘young blood’ to flow. However, it is also metaphoric of the psychological wounds left by the war. Over 60,000 Australian men were killed in the First World War, while 23,000 of these soldiers were never accounted for. [National Archives of Australia, 2009] This created great devastation and grief among Australian families, whose brothers, husbands, and children never returned from war. Many Australian soldiers also experienced great despair both during and after the war. They experienced what was then referred to

She questioned the necessity for war, and encouraged others to do so as well. It was through the use of poetic devices and aesthetic features present in her poetry, influenced by her own emotional, maternal and religious attitudes, that she was able to effectively position readers to question their own beliefs about the war. Gilmore not only motivated readers to develop their own opinions about the war, but also to feel great pity for those involved, and it is for this reason that she is regarded as one of Australia’s most influential anti-war poets. [Wilde,