Anthem for Doomed Youth – Wilfred Owen

Posted on by Opher

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

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.

Wilfred Owen – Dulce et Decorum Est

Posted on by Opher

Wilfred Owen is one of my favourite poets. He lived through the terrors of the 1st World War and was killed right at the end. He saw terrible things and suffered post traumatic stress. He also wrote the most moving poems about the reality and horrors of war. Nobody has done it better. I am always moved by graphic depictions. They are real. He captures it.

He went to war full of ideals of chivalry, bravery and idealism. He saw the slaughter and reality and realised it was all a lie – one big lie. There is nothing noble or valiant about dying for someone else’s ideas of what is right. War is about power

This poem captures the unglamorous reality of the weariness, fear, terror and disgusting degradation and dehumanisation of war.

When I ran the Remembrance Service at school this is the poem I read. There were some who said it was too graphic. How can war be talked about in kind words?

Lest we forget.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
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.
Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
It is sweet and just to die for one’s country.