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
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.
children study enjoyed
Children are not meant to be studied, but enjoyed. Only by studying to be pleased do we understand them.
missing world mastery
Courage was mine, and I had mystery, Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery: To miss the march of this retreating world Into vain citadels that are not walled.
war lying latin
The old Lie:Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
sweet lying war
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels I would go up and wash them from sweet wells, Even with truths that lie too deep for taint. I would have poured my spirit without stint But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
reading fighting years
After all my years of playing soldiers, and then of reading History, I have almost a mania to be in the East, to see fighting, and to serve.
men tears merriment
These men are worth your tears. You are not worth their merriment.
sweet fitting fatherland
Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland.
war saws mud
I, too, saw God through mud
red lips stones
Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
war moon men
No-man's land under snow is like the face of the moon: chaotic, crater ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of madness.
night sight broken
The universal pervasion of ugliness, hideous landscapes, vile noises, foul language...everything. Unnatural, broken, blasted; the distortion of the dead, whose unburiable bodies sit outside the dug outs all day, all night, the most execrable sights on earth. In poetry we call them the most glorious.
girl flower drawing
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.
age inward no-hope
Those who have no hope pass their old age shrouded with an inward gloom.