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
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.
war this-generation generations
I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense conciliatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
war pity subjects
My subject is war, and the pity of war.
war flying enthusiasm
Flying is the only active profession I would ever continue with enthusiasm after the War.
country sweet children
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory. The old lie: It is sweet and fitting that you should die for your country.
war book hero
This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.
sleep earth clay
Was it for this the clay grew tall? O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?
war gun bells
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
sweet fitting fatherland
Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland.
men glee may
For by my glee might many men have laughed, And of my weeping may something have been left, Which must die now.
war eye boys
Walking abroad, one is the admiration of all little boys, and meets an approving glance from every eye of elderly.