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
historical soldier unthinkable
If I have to be a soldier I must be a good one, anything else is unthinkable
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.
dream children cancer
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.
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.
truth today poet
All the poet can do today is warn. That is why true Poets must be truthful.
eye secret way
Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.
jesus gun tears
I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears; and caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts; and buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts; and rusted every bayonet with His tears.
children study enjoyed
Children are not meant to be studied, but enjoyed. Only by studying to be pleased do we understand them.
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.
reading thinking satisfaction
I am only conscious of any satisfaction in Scientific Reading or thinking when it rounds off into a poetical generality and vagueness.