SELECTED POEMS BY WILFRED OWEN

Anthem for Doomed Youth Dulce et Decorum Est

BY WILFRED OWEN BY WILFRED OWEN

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

— Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

Can patter out their hasty orisons. And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,— But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

And bugles calling for them from sad shires. Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

What candles may be held to speed them all? Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds. As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
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In all my dreams before my helpless sight, Latin phrase is from the Roman poet Horace: “It is sweet and
fitting to die for one’s country.”
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
Source: Poems (Viking Press, 1921)

The Send-Off
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
BY WILFRED OWEN
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
To the siding-shed,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
As men's are, dead.
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
Stood staring hard,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
Pro patria mori.
Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp

Winked to the guard.

Notes:

So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.

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They were not ours: Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

We never heard to which front these were sent. Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

Nor there if they yet mock what women meant With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,

Who gave them flowers. Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,—

Shall they return to beatings of great bells By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

In wild trainloads?

A few, a few, too few for drums and yells, With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;

May creep back, silent, to still village wells Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,

Up half-known roads. And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.

“Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.”

Strange Meeting “None,” said that other, “save the undone years,

BY WILFRED OWEN The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,

It seemed that out of battle I escaped Was my life also; I went hunting wild cal

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped After the wildest beauty in the world,

Through granites which titanic wars had groined. Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,

But mocks the steady running of the hour,

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And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here. Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

For by my glee might many men have laughed,

And of my weeping something had been left, “I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

Which must die now. I mean the truth untold, I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned

The pity of war, the pity war distilled. Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

Now men will go content with what we spoiled. I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled. Let us sleep now. . . .”

They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.

None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress. Futility

Courage was mine, and I had mystery; BY WILFRED OWEN

Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery: Move him into the sun—

To miss the march of this retreating world Gently its touch awoke him once,

Into vain citadels that are not walled. At home, whispering of fields half-sown.

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels, Always it woke him, even in France,

I would go up and wash them from sweet wells, Until this morning and this snow.

Even with truths that lie too deep for taint. If anything might rouse him now

I would have poured my spirit without stint The kind old sun will know.

But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.

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Think how it wakes the seeds—

Woke once the clays of a cold star. -These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.

Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides Memory fingers in their hair of murders,

Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir? Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.

Was it for this the clay grew tall? Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,

—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.

To break earth's sleep at all? Always they must see these things and hear them,

Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,

Mental Cases Carnage incomparable, and human squander

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight? Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.

Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,

Drooping tongues from jays that slob their relish, Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented

Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked? Back into their brains, because on their sense

Stroke on stroke of pain,- but what slow panic, Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black;

Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets? Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.

Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms -Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,

Misery swelters. Surely we have perished Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.

Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish? -Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
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Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging; 'The world is washing out its stains,' he said.

Snatching after us who smote them, brother, 'It doesn't like our cheeks so red:

Pawing us who dealt them war and madness. Young blood's its great objection.

But when we're duly white-washed, being dead,

Inspection The race will bear Field-Marshal God's inspection.'

'You! What d'you mean by this?' I rapped.

'You dare come on parade like this?' The Dead-Beat

'Please, sir, it's-' ''Old yer mouth,' the sergeant snapped. He dropped, - more sullenly than wearily,

'I takes 'is name, sir?'-'Please, and then dismiss.' Lay stupid like a cod, heavy like meat,

And none of us could kick him to his feet;

Some days 'confined to camp' he got, -just blinked at my revolver, blearily;

For being 'dirty on parade'. - Didn't appear to know a war was on,

He told me, afterwards, the damnèd spot Or see the blasted trench at which he stared.

Was blood, his own. 'Well, blood is dirt,' I said. 'I'll do 'em in,' he whined. 'If this hand's spared,

I'll murder them, I will.'

'Blood's dirt,' he laughed, looking away,

Far off to where his wound had bled A low voice said,

And almost merged forever into clay. 'It's Blighty, p'raps, he sees; his pluck's all gone,
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Dreaming of all the valiant, that aren't dead: Is over all the width of Europe whirled,

Bold uncles, smiling ministerially; Rending the sails of progress. Rent or furled

Maybe his brave young wife, getting her fun Are all Art's ensigns. Verse wails. Now begin

In some new home, improved materially. Famines of thought and feeling. Love's wine's thin.

It's not these stiffs have crazed him; nor the Hun.' The grain of human Autumn rots, down-hurled.

We sent him down at last, out of the way. For after Spring had bloomed in early Greece,

Unwounded; - stout lad, too, before that strafe. And Summer blazed her glory out with Rome,

Malingering? Stretcher-bearers winked, 'Not half!' An Autumn softly fell, a harvest home,

A slow grand age, and rich with all increase.

Next day I heard the Doc's well-whiskied laugh: But now, for us, wild Winter, and the need

'That scum you sent last night soon died. Hooray!' Of sowings for new Spring, and blood for seed.

Wilfred Owen

Disabled

1914 BY WILFRED OWEN

War broke: and now the Winter of the world He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,

With perishing great darkness closes in. And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,

The foul tornado, centred at Berlin, Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
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Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn, Now, he is old; his back will never brace;

Voices of play and pleasure after day, He's lost his colour very far from here,

Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him. Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,

And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race

* * * * * And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.

About this time Town used to swing so gay * * * * *

When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees,

And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,— One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg,

In the old times, before he threw away his knees. After the matches carried shoulder-high.

Now he will never feel again how slim It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg,

Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands, He thought he'd better join. He wonders why.

All of them touch him like some queer disease. Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts.

That's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,

* * * * * Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts,

He asked to join. He didn't have to beg;

There was an artist silly for his face, Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years.

For it was younger than his youth, last year. Germans he scarcely thought of, all their guilt,
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And Austria's, did not move him. And no fears Tonight he noticed how the women's eyes

Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.

For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes; How cold and late it is! Why don't they come

And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears; And put him into bed? Why don't they come?

Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.

And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers. Apologia Pro Poemate Meo

* * * * * I, too, saw God through mud—

The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.

Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal. War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,

Only a solemn man who brought him fruits And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.

Merry it was to laugh there—

* * * * * Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.

For power was on us as we slashed bones bare

Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes, Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.

And do what things the rules consider wise,

And take whatever pity they may dole. I, too, have dropped off fear—
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Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,

And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear, I have perceived much beauty

Past the entanglement where hopes lie strewn; In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;

Heard music in the silentness of duty;

And witnessed exhultation— Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.

Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,

Shine and lift up with passion of oblation, Nevertheless, except you share

Seraphic for an hour, though they were foul. With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,

Whose world is but a trembling of a flare

I have made fellowships— And heaven but a highway for a shell,

Untold of happy lovers in old song.

For love is not the binding of fair lips You shall not hear their mirth:

With the soft silk of eyes that look and long. You shall not come to think them well content

By any jest of mine. These men are worth

By joy, whose ribbon slips,— Your tears: You are not worth their merriment.

But wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong;

Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips; Exposure

Knit in the welding of the rifle-thong. BY WILFRED OWEN

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Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive
us . . .
Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.
Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . .
Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,
Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . .
With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew,
Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
We watch them wandering up and down the wind's
But nothing happens. nonchalance,

But nothing happens.

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,

Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles. Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces—

Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,
Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
What are we doing here?
We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-
dazed,
Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,
Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.

—Is it that we are dying?

The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow . . .

We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.
Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed
Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;
Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey,
For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;
But nothing happens.
Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed,—
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We turn back to our dying. And took the fire with him, and a knife.

And as they sojourned both of them together,

Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn; Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,

Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit. Behold the preparations, fire and iron,

For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid; But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?

Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born, Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,

For love of God seems dying. and builded parapets and trenches there,

And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.

Tonight, this frost will fasten on this mud and us, When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,

Shrivelling many hands, and puckering foreheads crisp. Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,

The burying-party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp, Neither do anything to him. Behold,

Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice, A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;

But nothing happens. Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young But the old man would not so, but slew his son,

Wilfred Owen, 1893 - 1918 And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went, S. I. W.

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BY WILFRED OWEN Brothers—would send his favourite cigarette.

I will to the King, Each week, month after month, they wrote the same,

And offer him consolation in his trouble, Thinking him sheltered in some Y.M. Hut,

For that man there has set his teeth to die, Because he said so, writing on his butt

And being one that hates obedience, Where once an hour a bullet missed its aim

Discipline, and orderliness of life, And misses teased the hunger of his brain.

I cannot mourn him. His eyes grew old with wincing, and his hand

W.B. YEATS Reckless with ague. Courage leaked, as sand

From the best sand-bags after years of rain.

I. THE PROLOGUE But never leave, wound, fever, trench-foot, shock,

Untrapped the wretch. And death seemed still withheld

Patting good-bye, doubtless they told the lad For torture of lying machinally shelled,

He’d always show the Hun a brave man’s face; At the pleasure of this world’s Powers who’d run amok.

Father would sooner him dead than in disgrace,—

Was proud to see him going, aye, and glad. He’d seen men shoot their hands, on night patrol.

Perhaps his mother whimpered how she’d fret Their people never knew. Yet they were vile.

Until he got a nice safe wound to nurse. ‘Death sooner than dishonour, that’s the style!’

Sisters would wish girls too could shoot, charge, curse … So Father said.
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But kept him for death’s promises and scoff,

And life’s half-promising, and both their riling.

II. THE ACTION

One dawn, our wire patrol IV. THE EPILOGUE

Carried him. This time, Death had not missed.

We could do nothing but wipe his bleeding cough. With him they buried the muzzle his teeth had kissed,

Could it be accident? - Rifles go off… And truthfully wrote the Mother, ‘Tim died smiling’.

Not sniped? No. (Later they found the English ball.)

Spring Offensive

BY WILFRED OWEN

III. THE POEM Halted against the shade of a last hill,

They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease

It was the reasoned crisis of his soul And, finding comfortable chests and knees

Against more days of inescapable thrall, Carelessly slept.

Against infrangibly wired and blind trench wall But many there stood still

Curtained with fire, roofed in with creeping fire, To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,

Slow grazing fire, that would not burn him whole Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.
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Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.

By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge, O larger shone that smile against the sun,—

For though the summer oozed into their veins Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.

Like the injected drug for their bones’ pains,

Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass, So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together

Fearfully flashed the sky’s mysterious glass. Over an open stretch of herb and heather

Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned

Hour after hour they ponder the warm field— With fury against them; and soft sudden cups

And the far valley behind, where the buttercups Opened in thousands for their blood; and the green slopes

Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up, Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.

Where even the little brambles would not yield,

But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands; Of them who running on that last high place

They breathe like trees unstirred. Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up

Till like a cold gust thrilled the little word On the hot blast and fury of hell’s upsurge,

At which each body and its soul begird Or plunged and fell away past this world’s verge,

And tighten them for battle. No alarms Some say God caught them even before they fell.

Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste— But what say such as from existence’ brink

Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced Ventured but drave too swift to sink.
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The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,

And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames

With superhuman inhumanities,

Long-famous glories, immemorial shames—

And crawling slowly back, have by degrees

Regained cool peaceful air in wonder—

Why speak they not of comrades that went under?