Daniel has done some stage work in London and, for BBC, did a magnificent job portraying the son of Rudyard Kipling who was tragically killed during the First World War.
The Senior Kipling did assist his son to get into the military, but did not think that he would see combat. Jack was only seventeen and practically blind. He did enlist and gained a commission as a Second Lieutenant, in charge of a unit of the famous Irish Brigade.
If you think that Daniel can play the darker side in the Potter series, you can grab a roll of Bounty and rent MY SON JACK. Then you can say an even more fervent prayer for our men and women in the Armed Forces.
Another promising English poet who died young in World War I was Rupert Brooke. We aspiring writers in the Virginia mountains had to read him because of his metre and his passion.
Brooke's best-known work is the sonnet sequence 1914 AND OTHER POEMS (1915, the year he was killed), containing the famous 'The Soldier.' Poets have always glorified war, and Brooke did his best to continue the tradition, and sacrificed himself in this effort.
His death made him the hero of the first phase of the war and a symbol of all the gifted young people destroyed by the conflict. However, Brooke's poetry with its patriotic mood & naive enthusiasm went out of fashion as the realities of trench warfare and new weaponry were fully understood.
Sometimes Even Now
Rupert Brooke
Sometimes even now I may Steal a prisoner’s holiday,
Slip, when all is worst, the bands, Hurry back, and duck beneath Time’s old tyrannous groping hands, Speed away with laughing breath Back to all I’ll never know, Back to you, a year ago.
Truant there from Time and Pain, What I had, I find again: Sunlight in the boughs above, Sunlight in your hair and dress, The hands too proud for all but Love, The Lips of utter kindliness, The Heart of bravery swift and clean Where the best was safe, I knew, And laughter in the gold and green, And song, and friends, and ever you With smiling and familiar eyes, You—but friendly: you—but true. And Innocence accounted wise, And Faith the fool, the pitiable.
Love so rare, one would swear All of earth for ever well — Careless lips and flying hair, And little things I may not tell.
It does but double the heart-ache
When I wake,
when I wake.
