Wilfred Owen

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.

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

As bronze may be much beautified by lying in the dark damp soil, so men who fade in dust of warfare fade fairer, and sorrow blooms their soul.

We were marooned in a frozen desert. There was not a sign of life on the horizon and a thousand signs of death... The marvel is we did not all die of cold.

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 old Lie:Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

Winter Song The browns, the olives, and the yellows died, And were swept up to heaven; where they glowed Each dawn and set of sun till Christmastide, And when the land lay pale for them, pale-snowed, Fell back, and down the snow-drifts flamed and flowed. From off your face, into the winds of winter, The sun-brown and the summer-gold are blowing; But they shall gleam with spiritual glinter, When paler beauty on your brows falls snowing, And through those snows my looks shall be soft-going.

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.

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.

Those who, like the beasts, have no such Hope, pass their old age shrouded with an inward gloom.

I am marooned on a Crag of Superiority in an ocean of soldiers.

Flying is the only active profession I would ever continue with enthusiasm after the War.

The war effects me less than it ought. I can do no service to anybody by agitating for news or making dole over the slaughter.

My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

The war affects me less than it ought. But I can do no service to anybody by agitating for news or making dole over the slaughter.

I was a boy when I first realized that the fullest life liveable was a Poet's

All I ask is to be held above the barren wastes of want.

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.

Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.