The Sheila Variations

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

Today is the birthday of "World War I poet" Wilfred Owen.

Owen was unpublished during his lifetime. He was killed in France a week before the Armistice - he was age 25. It was only after his death that his strikingly beautiful and sad poems and sonnets were published. It is difficult to imagine a man so young writing with such power and confidence. He is now recognized, along with Rubert Brooke, and Siegfried Sassoon, as one of those poets, one of those rare unsentimental poets, who can put the horror of warfare into verse. Trench warfare, in particular. (Yeats disagreed. He disliked Owens' poems intensely, and did not include him - or any of the "war poets" in his The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892-1935.)

The "war poets" are wrenching to read. I've posted a couple of Wilfred Owen's poems below. You'll see what I mean, instantly, if you haven't encountered his work before.

Owen said, in regards to his war poems: "These elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful."

The End by Wilfred Owen

After the blast of lightning from the east,
The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot Throne;
After the drums of time have rolled and ceased,
And by the bronze west long retreat is blown,

Shall Life renew these bodies? Of a truth
All death will he annul, all tears assuage?-
Or fill these void veins full again with youth,
And wash, with an immortal water, Age?

When I do ask white Age he saith not so:
'My head hangs weighed with snow.'
And when I hearken to the Earth, she saith:
'My fiery heart shrinks, aching. It is death.
Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified,
Nor my titanic tears, the seas, be dried.'

Futility by Wilfred Owen

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?

On Seeing a Piece of Our Artillery Brought into Action by Wilfred Owen

Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm,
Great gun towering towards Heaven, about to curse;
Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse
Huge imprecations like a blasting charm!
Reach at that Arrogance which needs thy harm,
And beat it down before its sins grow worse;
Spend our resentment, cannon,--yea, disburse
Our gold in shapes of flame, our breaths in storm.

Yet, for men's sakes whom thy vast malison
Must wither innocent of enmity,
Be not withdrawn, dark arm, thy spoilure done,
Safe to the bosom of our prosperity.
But when thy spell be cast complete and whole,
May God curse thee, and cut thee from our soul!

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,--
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
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.

Posted by sheila