Hill and History

I know that Dominique has already said some really interesting things below about Hill's take on literature and history, but I wanted to follow on from her ideas with my own. Reading his poetry, it was the first thing that really stood out to me; especially in the extract from 'Mercian Hymns' because of the way he condenses huge gaps in history and brings together the ancient 'Albion' and 'Mercia' with his own memories of childhood in Worcestershire. In the poems I've read, history appears to be something which is just as much part of the present as it is of the past. In 'The Guardians' this is most clearly shown in the way 'The young' are overshadowed and 'watched' by 'the old'. The old, in my mind, are presented as the generation who suffered directly in World War II, who watched the world 'topple' and 'burn' and still feel its 'aftershocks'. But although the younger generation try to move on in a 'fragile' world, this darker history (perhaps represented by the 'thunder-heads' moving in from the south) continues to dog them. I agree with Dominique's argument that 'Poetry can comment upon, witness and depict history but it is merely a literary artifact, fixed in history' but I also think the purpose of history is to inform the future and so it is always relevant. My point is largely based on a quote from Thucydides's The History of the Peloponnesian War which states that "history is philosophy teaching by example". To me Hill's poem really captures this, for it is written a decade after the war but still, at the very end of the poem, 'the first dead scrape home', and this is an ever-present reminder to the next generation that their world is more fragile than they might imagine. Therefore poetry acts in the same way; something which is always relevant because it informs future generations about humanity and the world so that they might learn and maybe even bring about change.