Poems Collected Poems [Electronic resource] / by Wilfred Owen Owen, Wilfred, 1893-1918 creation of machine-readable version Triggs, Sara Text data (1 file : ca. 92.1 kilobytes) Oxford Text Archive Oxford
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 Oxford Text Archive Subject Headings Library of Congress Subject Headings English Poems -- Great Britain -- 20th century 2001-01-02 Cataloguer Webb, Anton Header changed in accordance with ISBD(ER) guidelines and expanded. Validated in the TEI Lite DTD using XMetal 2.0 1997-05-14 cvt (converter) Fix, Jakob automatic conversion from ota dtd to tei lite dtd 1997-02 pfr (Proofreader) Triggs, Sara Check text Collected Poems by Wilfred Owen War Poems Strange Meeting It seemed that out of 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, By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell. With a thousand pains 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 that other, “save the undone years, The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours, Was my life also; I went hunting wild After the wildest beauty in the world, Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair, But mocks the steady running of the hour, And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here. For of my glee might many men have laughed, And of my weeping something had been left, Which must die now. I mean the truth untold, The pity of war, the pity war distilled. Now men will go content with what we spoiled, Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled. They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress. None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress. Courage was mine, and I had mystery, Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery: To miss the march of this retreating world Into vain citadels that are not walled. Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels, I would go up and wash them from sweet wells, Even with truths that lie too deep for taint. I would have poured my spirit without stint But not through wounds; not on the cess of war. Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were. I am the enemy you killed, my friend. I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed. I parried; but my hands were loath and cold. Let us sleep now....” 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 these who lose imagination: They have enough to carry with ammunition. Their spirit drags no pack, Their old wounds, save with cold, can not more ache. Having seen all things red, Their eyes are rid Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever. And terror's first constriction over, Their hearts remain small-drawn. Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle Now long since ironed, Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned. IV Happy the soldier home, with not a notion How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack, And many sighs are drained. Happy the lad whose mind was never trained: His days are worth forgetting more than not. He sings along the march Which we march taciturn, because of dusk, The long, forlorn, relentless trend From larger day to huger night. V We wise, who with a thought besmirch Blood over all our soul, How should we see our task But through his blunt and lashless eyes? Alive, he is not vital overmuch; Drying, not mortal overmuch; Nor sad, nor proud, Nor curious at all. He cannot tell Old men's placidity from his. VI But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns, That they should be as stones; Wretched are they, and mean With paucity that never was simplicity. By choice they made themselves immune To pity and whatever mourns in man Before the last sea and the hapless stars; Whatever mourns when many leave these shores; Whatever shares The eternal reciprocity of tears. 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 hour; though they were foul. I have made fellowships— Untold of happy lovers in old song. For love is not the binding of fair lips With the soft silk of eyes that look and long, By Joy, whose ribbon slips,— But wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong; Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips; Knit in the webbing of the rifle-thong. I have perceived much beauty In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight; Heard music in the silentness of duty; Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate. Nevertheless, except you share With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell, Whose world is but the trembling of a flare, And heaven but as the highway for a shell, You shall not hear their mirth: You shall not come to think them well content By any jest of mine. These men are worth Your tears. You are not worth their merriment.

November 1917.

Greater Love Red lips are not so red As the stained stones kissed by the English dead. Kindness of wooed and wooer Seems shame to their love pure. O Love, your eyes lose lure When I behold eyes blinded in my stead! Your slender attitude Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed, Rolling and rolling there Where God seems not to care; Till the fierce love they bear Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude. Your voice sings not so soft,— Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,— Your dear voice is not dear, Gentle, and evening clear, As theirs whom none now hear, Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed. Heart, you were never hot Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot; And though your hand be pale, Paler are all which trail Your cross through flame and hail: Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not. The Parable of the Old Man and the Young So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went, And took the fire with him, and a knife. And as they sojourned both of them together, Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father, Behold the preparations, fire and iron, But where the lamb for this burnt-offering? Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps, And builded parapets and trenches there, And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son. When lo! an angel called him out of heaven, Saying, Lay not they hand upon the lad, Neither do anything to him. Behold, A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns; Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him. But the old man would not so, but slew his son, And half the seed of Europe, one by one. Arms and the Boy Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood; Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash; And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh. Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-leads Which long to nuzzle in the hearts of lads, Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth, Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death. For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple. There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple; And God will grow no talons at his heels, Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls. Anthem for Doomed Youth What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,— The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires. What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds. The Send-Off Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way To the siding-shed, And lined the train with faces grimly gay. Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray As men's are, dead. Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp Stood staring hard, Sorry to miss them from the upland camp. Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp Winked to the guard. So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went. They were not ours: We never heard to which front these were sent. Nor there if they yet mock what women meant Who gave them flowers. Shall they return to beatings of great bells In wild train-loads? A few, a few, too few for drums and yells, May creep back, silent, to still village wells Up half-known roads. Exposure Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us... Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent... Low, drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient... Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous, But nothing happens. Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire, Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles. Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles, Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war. What are we doing here? The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow... We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy. Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray, But nothing happens. Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence. Less deathly than the air that shudders black with snow, With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew; We watch them wandering up and down the wind's non-chalance, But nothing happens. Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces— 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? Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there; For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs; Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed,— We turn back to our dying. Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn; Nor ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit. For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid; Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born, For love of God seems dying. To-night, His frost will fasten on this mud and us, Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp. The burying-party, pricks and shovels in their shaking grasp, Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice, But nothing happens. The Show We have fallen in the dreams the ever-living Breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world, And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh. W.B. Yeats My soul looked down from a vague height, with Death, As unremembering how I rose or why, And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth, Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe, And pitted with great pocks and scabs of plagues. Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire, There moved thin caterpillars, slowly uncoiled. It seemed they pushed themselves to be as plugs Of ditches, where they writhed and shrivelled, killed. By them had slimy paths been trailed and scraped Round myriad warts that might be little hills. From gloom's last dregs these long-strung creatures crept, And vanished out of dawn down hidden holes. (And smell came up from those foul openings As out of mouths, or deep wounds deepening.) On dithering feet upgathered, more and more, Brown strings, towards strings of gray, with bristling spines, All migrants from green fields, intent on mire. Those that were gray, of more abundant spawns, Ramped on the rest and ate them and were eaten. I saw their bitten backs curve, loop, and straighten, I watched those agonies curl, lift, and flatten. Whereat, in terror what the sight might mean, I reeled and shivered earthward like a feather. And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan. And He, picking a manner of worm, which had hid Its bruises in the earth, but crawled no further, Showed me its feet, the feet of m any men, And the fresh-severed head of it, my head. 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 an injected drug for their bodies' 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 buttercup Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up, Where even the little brambles would not yield, But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands; They breathe like trees unstirred. Till like a cold gust thrills the little word At which each body and its soul begird And tighten them for battle. No alarms Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste— Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done. O larger shone that smile against the sun,— Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned. So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together Over an open stretch of herb and heather Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned With fury against them; earth set sudden cups In thousands for their blood; and the green slope Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space. Of them who running on that last high place Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up On the hot blast and fury of hell's upsurge, Or plunged and fell away past this world's verge, Some say God caught them even before they fell. But what say such as from existence' brink Ventured but drave too swift to sink, 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 not they of comrades that went under? Dulce Et Decorum Est Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. Asleep Under his helmet, up against his pack, After the many days of work and waking, Sleep took him by the brow and laid him back. And in the happy no-time of his sleeping, Death took him by the heart. There was a quaking Of the aborted life within him leaping... Then chest and sleepy arms once more fell slack. And soon the slow, stray blood came creeping From the intrusive lead, like ants on track. Whether his deeper sleep lie shaded by the shaking Of great wings, and the thoughts that hung the stars, High pillowed on calm pillows of God's making Above these clouds, these rains, these sleets of lead, And these winds' scimitars; —Or whether yet his thin and sodden head Confuses more and more with the low mould, His hair being one with the grey grass And finished fields of autumns that are old... Who knows? Who hopes? Who troubles? Let it pass! He sleeps. He sleeps less tremulous, less cold Than we who must awake, and waking, say Alas! Futility Move him into the sun— Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now The kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seeds,— Woke, once, the clays of a cold star. Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides, Full-nerved—still warm—too hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall? —O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all? The Last Laugh 'O Jesus Christ! I'm hit,' he said; and died. Whether he vainly cursed, or prayed indeed, The Bullets chirped—In vain! vain! vain! Machine-guns chuckled,—Tut-tut! Tut-tut! And the Big Gun guffawed. Another sighed,—'O Mother, mother! Dad!' Then smiled, at nothing, childlike, being dead. And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud Leisurely gestured,—Fool! And the falling splinters tittered. 'My Love!' one moaned. Love-languid seemed his mood, Till, slowly lowered, his whole faced kissed the mud. And the Bayonets' long teeth grinned; Rabbles of Shells hooted and groaned; And the Gas hissed. The Letter With B.E.F. Jun 10. Dear Wife, (O blast this pencil. 'Ere, Bill, lend's a knife.) I'm in the pink at present, dear. I think the war will end this year. We don't see much of them square-'eaded 'Uns. We're out of harm's way, not bad fed. I'm longing for a taste of your old buns. (Say, Jimmie, spare's a bite of bread.) There don't seem much to say just now. (Yer what? Then don't, yer ruddy cow! And give us back me cigarette!) I'll soon be 'ome. You mustn't fret. My feet's improvin', as I told you of. We're out in the rest now. Never fear. (VRACH! By crumbs, but that was near.) Mother might spare you half a sov. Kiss Nell and Bert. When me and you— (Eh? What the 'ell! Stand to? Stand to! Jim, give's a hand with pack on, lad. Guh! Christ! I'm hit. Take 'old. Aye, bad. No, damn your iodine. Jim? 'Ere! Write my old girl, Jim, there's a dear.) The Sentry We'd found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew, And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell Hammered on top, but never quite burst through. Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime, Kept slush waist-high and rising hour by hour, And choked the steps too thick with clay to climb. What murk of air remained stank old, and sour With fumes of whizz-bangs, and the smell of men Who'd lived there years, and left their curse in the den, If not their corpses.... There we herded from the blast Of whizz-bangs, but one found our door at last,— Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles, And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping And sploshing in the flood, deluging much— The sentry's body; then, his rifle, handles Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck. We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined “O sir, my eyes—I'm blind—I'm blind, I'm blind!” Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids And said if he could see the least blurred light He was not blind; in time he'd get all right. “I can't,” he sobbed. Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids', Watch my dreams still; but I forgot him there In posting Next for duty, and sending a scout To beg a stretcher somewhere, and flound'ring about To other posts under the shrieking air. Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed, And one who would have drowned himself for good,— I try not to remember these things now. Let dread hark back for one word only: how Half listening to that sentry's moans and jumps, And the wild chattering of his broken teeth, Renewed most horribly whenever crumps Pummelled the roof and slogged the air beneath— Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout “I see your lights!” But ours had long died out. Conscious His fingers wake, and flutter; up the bed. His eyes come open with a pull of will, Helped by the yellow may-flowers by his head. The blind-cord drawls across the window-sill... What a smooth floor the ward has! What a rug! Who is that talking somewhere out of sight? Why are they laughing? What's inside that jug? “Nurse! Doctor!”—“Yes; all right, all right.” But sudden evening muddles all the air— There seems no time to want a drink of water, Nurse looks so far away. And here and there Music and roses burst through crimson slaughter. He can't remember where he saw blue sky. More blankets. Cold. He's cold. A nd yet so hot. And there's no light to see the voices by; There is no time to ask—he knows not what. 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 buck! We used to say we'd hate to live dead-old,— Yet now...I'd willingly be puffy,bald, And patriotic. Buffers catch my boys At least the jokes hurled at them. I suppose Little I'd ever teach a son, but hitting, Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting. Well, that's what I learnt,—that, and making money. Your fifty years ahead seem none too many? Tell me how long I've got? God! For one year To help myself to nothing more than air! One Spring! Is one too good to spare, too long? Spring wind would work its own way to my lung, And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots. My servant's lamed, but listen how he shouts! When I'm lugged out, he'll still be good for that. Here in this mummy-case, you know, I've thought How well I might have swept his floors for ever. I'd ask no nights off when the bustle's over, Enjoying so the dirt. Who's prejudiced Against a grimed hand when his own's quite dust, Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn, Less warm than dust that mixes with arms' tan? I'd love to be a sweep, now, black as Town, Yes, or a muckman. Must I be his load? O Life, Life, let me breathe,—a dug-out rat! Not worse than ours the existences rats lead— Nosing along at night down some safe rut, They find a shell-proof home before they rot. Dead men may envy living mites in cheese, Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys, And subdivide, and never come to death. Certainly flowers have the easiest time on earth. “I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone” Shelley would tell me. Shelley would be stunned: The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now. “Pushing up daisies” is their creed, you know. To grain, then, go my fat, to buds my sap, For all the usefulness there is in soap. D'you think the Boche will ever stew man-soup? Some day, no doubt, if... Friend, be very sure I shall better off with plants that share More peaceably the meadow and the shower. Soft rains will touch me,—as they could touch once, And nothing but the sun shall make me ware. Your guns may crash around me. I'll not hear; Or, if I wince, I shall not know I wince. Don't take my soul's poor comfort for your jest. Soldiers may grow a soul when turned to fronds, But here's the thing's best left at home with friends. My soul's a little grief, grappling your chest, To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds. Carry my crying spirit till it's weaned To do without what blood remained these wounds. Disabled He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark, And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey, Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn, Voices of play and pleasure after day, Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him. 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,— In the old times, before he threw away his knees. Now he will never feel again how slim Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands; All of them touch him like some queer disease.