I was not familiar with Wilfred Owen and his glorious poetry until well after I’d left school. We never studied him – more’s the pity.
England’s best poet? Well maybe. Certainly nobody else was a better war poet.
He describes all the patriotic idealism of the young men that set off for that distant front full of valiant ideas of glory, the waves of the tearful young girls, leaving behind the green fields of England.
But there was no glory, no courageous fight – just the senseless death and anonymous end in the sucking mud and the explosions of shells.
Anthem for Doomed Youth
By Wilfred Owen
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 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.