Wilfred Owen Quotes

It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,
By his dead smile, I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand pains[3]that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said the other, "Save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from prog

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

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.

All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.

My subject is war, and the pity of war.

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.

The centuries will burn rich loads
With which we groaned,
Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids,
While songs are crooned:
But they will not dream of us poor lads,
Left in the ground.

Little I'd ever teach a son, but hitting, Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting.

The dust that fell unnoted as a dew,
Wrapped the dead city's face like mummy-cloth

Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.

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

Some say God caught them even before they fell.

Strange friend,' I said,'here is no cause to mourn.' 'None,'said the other,'save the undone years, The hopelessness.Whatever hope is yours Was my life also; I went hunting wild After the wildest beauty in the world.

Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier's paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed, - knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.

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.

He's lost his colour very far from here,
Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry

Ambition may be defined as the willingness to receive any number of hits on the nose.

Walking abroad, one is the admiration of all little boys, and meets an approving glance from every eye of elderly.

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

There breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead.

Consummation is consumption
We cannot consummate our bliss and not consume
All joys are cakes and vanish in eating
All bliss is sugar's melting in the mouth

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

Move him into the sun-
gently its touch awoke him once,

She is elegant rather than belle.

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.

Was it for this the clay grew tall? O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?

Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.

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.

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.

All a poet can do today is warn.

The old happiness is unreturning. Boy's griefs are not so grievous as youth's yearning. Boys have no sadness sadder than our hope.

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifle's 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 goodbyes.
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.

My soul's a little grief, grappling your chest,
To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased
On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds.

Heart, you were never hot
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one

The English say, Yours Truly, and mean it. The Italians say, I kiss your feet, and mean, I kick your head.

All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.

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.

Shall they return to beating of great bells
In wild train-loads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May creep back, silent, to village wells,
Up half-known roads.

I don't ask myself, is the life congenial to me? But, am I fitted for, am I called to, the Ministry?

When I begin to eliminate from the list all those professions which are impossible from a financial point of view and then those which I feel disinclined to - it leaves nothing.

And you have fixed my life - however short. You did not light me: I was always a mad comet; but you have fixed me. I spun round you a satellite for a month, but I shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where you will blaze.

All the poet can do today is warn. That is why true Poets must be truthful.

Sleep mothered them; and left the twilight sad.

These men are worth your tears. You are not worth their merriment.

I tried to peg out soldierly,
no use!
One dies of war like any old disease.

I thought of all that worked dark pits
Of war, and died
Digging the rock where Death reputes
Peace lies indeed.

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.

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.

And in his eyes
The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,
In different skies.

And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan.
And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hid
Its bruises in the earth, but crawled no further,
Showed me its feet, the feet of many men,
And the fresh-severed head of it, my head.

Now begin
Famines of thought and feeling.

Soldiers may grow a soul when turned to fronds,
But here the thing's best left at home with friends.

No-man's land under snow is like the face of the moon: chaotic, crater ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of madness.

Be bullied, be outraged, be killed, but do not kill.

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

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!

Be bullied, be outraged, by killed, but do not kill.

The marvel is that we did not all die of cold. As a matter of fact, only one of my party actually froze to death before he could be got back, but I am not able to tell how many have ended up in hospital. We were marooned in a frozen desert. There was not a sign of life on the horizon and a thousand signs of death.