Preface

This book is not about heroes.    English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.    Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, dominion or power,

                        except War.
            Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.
            The subject of it is War, and the pity of War.
            The Poetry is in the pity.
            Yet these elegies are not to this generation,
                        This is in no sense consolatory.

            They may be to the next.
            All the poet can do to-day is to warn.
            That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
            If I thought the letter of this book would last,
        I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives Prussia,--my ambition and those names will be content; for they will have achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders.

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

Wilfred Owen was an influential English poet, renowned for his poignant war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare during World War I. His works, such as 'Dulce et Decorum Est' and 'Anthem for Doomed Youth,' convey the brutal realities of war and challenge the romanticized notions of it. Owen's poetry, characterized by its stark realism and exploration of soldiers' suffering, has had a lasting impact on both literature and the collective memory of the war.

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

Insensibility

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, Simple Poetry

Smile, Smile, Smile

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, Simple Poetry

Exposure

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, Simple Poetry

Strange Meeting

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Insensibility

        I

    Happy are men who yet before they are killed
    Can let their veins run cold.
    Whom no compassion fleers
    Or makes their feet
    Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
    The front line withers,
    But they are troops who fade, not flowers
    For poets' tearful fooling:
    Men, gaps for filling
    Losses who might have fought
    Longer; but no one bothers.


        II

    And some cease feeling
    Even themselves or for themselves.
    Dullness best solves
    The tease and doubt of shelling,
    And Chance's strange arithmetic
    Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.
    They keep no check on Armies' decimation.


        III

    Happy are thes...

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

Apologia pro Poemate Meo

    I, too, saw God through mud--
        The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
        War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
        And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

    Merry it was to laugh there--
        Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.
        For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
        Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.

    I, too, have dropped off fear--
        Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,
        And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear
        Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;

    And witnessed exultation--
        Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,
        Shine and lift up with passion of oblation,
        Seraphic for an...

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

A Terre

        (Being the philosophy of many Soldiers.)



    Sit on the bed; I'm blind, and three parts shell,
    Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall.
    Both arms have mutinied against me--brutes.
    My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.

    I tried to peg out soldierly--no use!
    One dies of war like any old disease.
    This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.
    I have my medals?--Discs to make eyes close.
    My glorious ribbons?--Ripped from my own back
    In scarlet shreds. (That's for your poetry book.)

    A short life and a merry one, my brick!
    We used to say we'd hate to live dead old,--
    Yet now . . . I'd willingly be puffy, bald,
    And patriotic. Buffers catch from boys
    At least the jokes hurled ...

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

To Mr. William Watson.

[On writing the first instalment of The Purple East, a 'fine sonnet which it is our privilege to publish.' Westminster Gazette, Dec. 16, 1895.]


Dear Mr. Watson, we have heard with wonder,
    Not all unmingled with a sad regret,
That little penny blast of purple thunder,
    You issued in the Westminster Gazette;
The Editor describes it as a sonnet;
I wish to make a few remarks upon it.

Never, O craven England, nevermore
    Prate thou of generous effort, righteous aim!
So ran the lines, and left me very sore,
    For you may guess my heart was hot with shame:
Even thus early in your ample song
I felt that something must be really wrong.

But when I learned that our ignoble nation
    Lay sleeping like a log, and lay al...

Owen Seaman

The Poet's Theme

Why should the poet of these pregnant times
Be asked to sing of war's unholy crimes?

To laud and eulogise the trade which thrives
On horrid holocausts of human lives?

Man was a fighting beast when earth was young,
And war the only theme when Homer sung.

'Twixt might and might the equal contest lay:
Not so the battles of our modern day.

Too often now the conquering hero struts,
A Gulliver among the Lilliputs.

Success no longer rests on skill or fate,
But on the movements of a syndicate.

Of old, men fought and deemed it right and just,
To-day the warrior fights because he must;

And in his secret soul feels shame because
He desecrates the higher manhood's laws.

Oh, there are worthier themes for poet's pen
In th...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Wild with all Regrets

        (Another version of "A Terre".)

        To Siegfried Sassoon



    My arms have mutinied against me--brutes!
    My fingers fidget like ten idle brats,
    My back's been stiff for hours, damned hours.
    Death never gives his squad a Stand-at-ease.
    I can't read. There: it's no use. Take your book.
    A short life and a merry one, my buck!
    We said we'd hate to grow dead old. But now,
    Not to live old seems awful: not to renew
    My boyhood with my boys, and teach 'em hitting,
    Shooting and hunting,--all the arts of hurting!
--Well, that's what I learnt. That, and making money.
    Your fifty years in store seem none too many;
    But I've five minutes. God! For just two years
    To help myself to this good air of your...

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen