Wake Up, England! — An Early Pro-War Poem

By Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930), Poet Laureate of England, 1913-1930. Bridges was educated at Eton College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He went on to study medicine in London at St Bartholomew's Hospital, intending to practice until the age of 40 and then retire to write poetry. Despite being made poet laureate in 1913, Bridges was never a very well-known poet and only achieved his great popularity shortly before his death with "The Testament of Beauty."  "Wake Up, England" was the first of 13 war poems he would publish during the Great War and its aftermath. His best known war contribution, however, was his anthology in prose and verse, The Spirit Of Man, that appeared in 1916.

Bridges was also a member of  Britain's war propaganda group at Wellington House. Nevertheless,  he was criticized for lack of production during the war.  At one point he said, "The war is awful. I can scarcely hold together. [...] Just at present I am far too disturbed to write, the communication with my subconscious mind is broken off."  His son Edward was posted to the western front in the autumn of 1915 and, shortly after the Bridges' home was gutted by fire, was repatriated wounded in February 1917 after receiving the Military Cross.

Edward, incidentally, would later serve with distinction as a civil servant and as Cabinet secretary during the Second World War. Postwar, Robert Bridges regained his productivity. Towards the end of his life he was awarded the Order of Merit capping of a distinguished career.

His father had died at his home, Chilswell, on 21 April 1930 and was buried at Yattendon.