Patrick Shaw-Stewart

Patrick Houston Shaw-Stewart (17 August 1888 – 30 December 1917) was a British scholar and poet of the Edwardian era who died on active service as a battalion commander in the Royal Naval Division during the First World War. He is best remembered today for his "Achilles in the Trench", one of the best-known war poems of the First World War.

Quotes

• I saw a man this morning
    Who did not wish to die;
  I ask and cannot answer
    If otherwise wish I.
  • "Achilles in the Trench", st. 1. Handwritten on a blank page of his copy of A Shropshire Lad in 1916. Cited in R. A. Knox, Patrick Shaw-Stewart (1920), p. 159, and M. Baring, Have You Anything to Declare? (1936), p. 39

• Oh Hell of ships and cities,
    Hell of men like me,
  Fatal second Helen,
    Why must I follow thee?
  • "Achilles in the Trench", st. 4
  • Cp. Aeschylus, Agamemnon, chorus, ll. 689–90

• Was it so hard, Achilles,
    So very hard to die?
  Thou knowest and I know not —
    So much the happier I.
  • "Achilles in the Trench", st. 6

• Stand in the trench, Achilles,
    Flame-capped, and shout for me.
  • "Achilles in the Trench", st. 7