Life — April 22, 1915 — page 11: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Spring 1915 - WWI Elegy This is a solemn memorial poem by Leolyn Louise Everett, accompanying stark imagery of a World War I battlefield. The illustration shows fallen soldiers and military debris scattered across devastated ground, with peaceful pastoral landscapes visible in the framing borders—a stark contrast emphasizing loss. The poem laments the war's carnage, addressing "meadow-lands soaked with blood" and children lost in "gory dust." It appeals to God to spare mothers from knowing their sons' fates, asking divine mercy for those who suffer. The tone is elegiac and anti-war, mourning the human cost rather than celebrating military glory. Published Spring 1915 (before U.S. entry), this reflects American literary responses to the European conflict's devastating scale.