Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MCwas an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend and mentor Siegfried Sassoon, and stood in stark contrast both to the public perception of war at the time and to the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Among his best-known works – most of which...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth18 March 1893
ask congenial fitted life
I don't ask myself, Is the life congenial to me? but, Am I fitted for,am I called to, the Ministry?
fields gently morning move poetry sun touch whispering woke
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.
against arms fingers gives idle poetry squad stiff ten
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.
blurred date fade god grow inscribe kiss name night nor rather scoring sweet thank thy
Now rather thank I God there is no riskOf gravers scoring it with florid screed.Let my inscription be this soldier's disc.Wear it, sweet friend. Inscribe no date nor deed.But may thy heart-beat kiss it, night and day,Until the name grow blurred and fade away.
brows flowers patient shall slow tenderness
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.
Be bullied, be outraged, be killed, but do not kill.
good
If I have got to be a soldier, I must be a good one, anything else is unthinkable.
poetry subject war
My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.
poet poets today truest
All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the truest poets must be truthful.
creep drums few poetry village
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,May creep back, silent, to still village wellsUp half-known roads.
caught instead man poetry pride ram
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...
inevitable influence interests isolation mixing opposite persons serious tend whose
The isolation from any whose interests are the same as mine, the constant, inevitable mixing with persons whose influence will tend in the opposite direction-this is a serious drawback.
death happy took
And in the happy no-time of his sleeping/ Death took him by the heart.
together language holding-on
Do you know what would hold me together on a battlefield? The sense that I was perpetuating the language in which Keats and the rest of them wrote!