Robert Laurence Binyon

The Healers

IN a vision of the night I saw them,
In the battles of the night.
'Mid the roar and the reeling shadows of blood
They were moving like light,

Light of the reason

Enlightenment language—**reason** and **will** controlling emotion. Medical work as rational discipline, not heroic passion.

Light of the reason, guarded
Tense within the will,
As a lantern under a tossing of boughs
Burns steady and still.
With scrutiny calm, and with fingers
Patient as swift
They bind up the hurts and the pain-writhen
Bodies uplift,
Untired and defenceless; around them
With shrieks in its breath
Bursts stark from the terrible horizon
Impersonal death;
But they take not their courage from anger

not their courage from anger

Direct contrast to combat soldiers. Warriors need rage to kill; medics need something else entirely to save.

That blinds the hot being;
They take not their pity from weakness;
Tender, yet seeing;
Feeling, yet nerved to the uttermost;
Keen, like steel;

wounds of the mind

1917—before 'shell shock' was understood. Binyon sees psychological trauma as incurable, unlike physical wounds.

Yet the wounds of the mind they are stricken with,
Who shall heal?

wounds of the mind

1917—before 'shell shock' was understood. Binyon sees psychological trauma as incurable, unlike physical wounds.

They endure to have eyes of the watcher
In hell, and not swerve
For an hour from the faith that they follow,
The light that they serve.
Man true to man, to his kindness
That overflows all,
To his spirit erect in the thunder
When all his forts fall,—
This light, in the tiger-mad welter,
They serve and they save.

Braver than the brave

Paradox doing real work: if medics are braver than soldiers, what does 'brave' even mean? He's redefining courage itself.

What song shall be worthy to sing of them
Braver than the brave?

Braver than the brave

Paradox doing real work: if medics are braver than soldiers, what does 'brave' even mean? He's redefining courage itself.

Laurence Binyon
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Binyon's Medical Corps Context

CONTEXT Binyon was 48 when WWI started—too old to fight. He volunteered with the Red Cross in France, working in field hospitals. This isn't armchair poetry; he watched surgeons operate under bombardment.

The poem's central tension: medics work "Untired and defenceless" while "Impersonal death" explodes around them. Combat soldiers have weapons, adrenaline, the psychology of kill-or-be-killed. Medics have forceps. They can't fight back, can't take cover when treating wounded, can't let fear shake their hands during surgery.

Notice "scrutiny calm" and "fingers / Patient as swift"—medical precision under fire requires contradictory qualities. Calm but urgent. Feeling but controlled. The poem's structure mirrors this: short lines creating tension, but regular rhythm maintaining steadiness. Form enacts content.

Redefining Courage

Binyon systematically dismantles martial courage. Soldiers get "anger / That blinds the hot being"—rage as anesthetic, making killing possible. Medics get nothing. They must stay "Tender, yet seeing" and "Feeling, yet nerved to the uttermost." Full consciousness, no emotional numbing.

The unanswered question—"Yet the wounds of the mind they are stricken with, / Who shall heal?"—is the poem's dark center. Physical wounds have protocols. Psychological trauma has nothing. Binyon sees medics absorbing horror with no release mechanism, no justifying narrative of victory or vengeance.

"Braver than the brave" isn't hyperbole. It's a logical problem: if traditional bravery means facing death in combat, what do you call facing death repeatedly, unarmed, to save others? The poem argues we lack language for this kind of courage.