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
numbers people old-people
Numbers of the old people cannot read. Those who can seldom do
life sweet laughter
The Young Soldier It is not death Without hereafter To one in dearth Of life and its laughter, Nor the sweet murder Dealt slow and even Unto the martyr Smiling at heaven: It is the smile Faint as a (waning) myth, Faint, and exceeding small On a boy's murdered mouth.
fighting clay sunbeams
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
hope grief sadness
The old happiness is unreturning. Boy's griefs are not so grievous as youth's yearning. Boys have no sadness sadder than our hope.
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!
ministry asks
I don't ask myself, is the life congenial to me? But, am I fitted for, am I called to, the Ministry?
home force never-fear
Never fear: Thank Home, and Poetry, and the Force behind both.
bullied outraged
Be bullied, be outraged, by killed, but do not kill.
spring tree doe
A Poem does not grow by jerks. As trees in Spring produce a new ring of tissue, so does every poet put forth a fresh outlay of stuff at the same season.
philosophy law analysis
I find purer philosophy in a Poem than in a Conclusion of Geometry, a chemical analysis, or a physical law
views lists impossible
When I begin to eliminate from the list all those professions which are impossible from a financial point of view and then those which I feel disinclined to-it leaves nothing
boys firsts poet
I was a boy when I first realized that the fullest life liveable was a Poet's
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.
poetry subject war
My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.