Strange Meeting Another Version

        Earth's wheels run oiled with blood.    Forget we that.
        Let us lie down and dig ourselves in thought.
        Beauty is yours and you have mastery,
        Wisdom is mine, and I have mystery.
        We two will stay behind and keep our troth.
        Let us forego men's minds that are brute's natures,
        Let us not sup the blood which some say nurtures,
        Be we not swift with swiftness of the tigress.
        Let us break ranks from those who trek from progress.
        Miss we the march of this retreating world
        Into old citadels that are not walled.
        Let us lie out and hold the open truth.
        Then when their blood hath clogged the chariot wheels
        We will go up and wash them from deep wells.
        What though we sink from men as pitchers falling
        Many shall raise us up to be their filling
        Even from wells we sunk too deep for war
        And filled by brows that bled where no wounds were.

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

Disabled

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, Simple Poetry

Futility

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, Simple Poetry

Mental Cases

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, Simple Poetry

The Sentry

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.

Strange Meeting

        It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
        Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
        Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.
        Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
        Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
        Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
        With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
        Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
        And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;
        With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
        Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
        And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
        "Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
        "None," said the other, "Save the undone years,
  ...

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

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

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

Spring Offensive

    Halted against the shade of a last hill,
    They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
    And, finding comfortable chests and knees
    Carelessly slept. But many there stood still
    To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
    Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.

    Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
    By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,
    For though the summer oozed into their veins
    Like the injected drug for their bones' pains,
    Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,
    Fearfully flashed the sky's mysterious glass.

    Hour after hour they ponder the warm field--
    And the far valley behind, where the buttercups
    Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming u...

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

The Passing Strange

Out of the earth to rest or range
Perpetual in perpetual change,
The unknown passing through the strange.

Water and saltness held together
To tread the dust and stand the weather,
And plough the field and stretch the tether,

To pass the wine-cup and be witty,
Water the sands and build the city,
Slaughter like devils and have pity,

Be red with rage and pale with lust,
Make beauty come, make peace, make trust,
Water and saltness mixed with dust;

Drive over earth, swim under sea,
Fly in the eagles secrecy,
Guess where the hidden comets be;

Know all the deathy seeds that still
Queen Helens beauty, Caesars will,
And slay them even as they kill;

Fashion an altar for a rood,
Defile a continent with blood,
And...

John Masefield

Strange Meeting *Another Version*

Suggested Poems

Strange Meeting Another Version