The Binding of the Beast: and Other War Verse

The Binding of the Beast and Other War Verse is a collection of poetry by George Sterling (1869-1926), the American poet, written in response to the First World War. The collection brings together Sterling’s various wartime poems and addresses the war from the perspective of an American observer of the European conflict.

The United States entered the First World War in April 1917 after nearly three years of attempted neutrality. The American literary response to the war produced major work across the period from 1914 through the immediate post-war years. Sterling’s contribution belongs to the large body of pro-Allied American wartime verse that emerged across the period, with the sizable poets of the older generation generally taking strong pro-Allied positions and producing patriotic work that supported the American war effort.

The Beast of the title refers to the German Empire under Wilhelm II, which American and Allied wartime propaganda regularly characterized as a beast that needed to be bound or destroyed. The collection reflects the wartime cultural mood and the extensive pro-Allied position that most American serious writers held during the period.