Wilfred Owen

'You!
What d'you mean by this?' I rapped.'You dare come on parade like this?''Please, sir, it's-' ''Old yer mouth,' the sergeant snapped.'I takes 'is name, sir?'-'Please, and then dismiss.'Some days 'confined to camp' he got,
For being…

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.
Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads…

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

Red lips are not so red As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!
Your slender attitude…

There was a whispering in my hearth,
A sigh of the coal.
Grown wistful of a former
It might recall.

A dismal fog-hoarse siren howls at dawn.
I watch the man it calls for, pushed and drawn
Backwards and forwards, helpless as a pawn.
But I'm lazy, and his work's crazy.Quick treble bells begin at nine o'clock,…

All sounds have been as music to my listening:
Pacific lamentations of slow bells,
The crunch of boots on blue snow rosy-glistening,
Shuffle of autumn leaves; and all farewells:

I, too, saw God through mud— The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.
Merry it was to laugh there— Where death…

O World of many worlds, O life of lives,
What centre hast thou? Where am I?
O whither is it thy fierce onrush drives?
Fight I, or drift; or stand; or fly?The loud machinery spins, points work in touch;…

An OdeIt lieth low near merry England's heart
Like a long-buried sin; and Englishmen
Forget that in its death their sires had part.
And, like a sin, Time lays it bare again…

Sing me at morn but only with your laugh;
Even as Spring that laugheth into leaf;
Even as Love that laugheth after Life.
Sing me but only with your speech all day

He dropped, - more sullenly than wearily,
Lay stupid like a cod, heavy like meat,
And none of us could kick him to his feet;
-just blinked at my revolver, blearily;…

We'd found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew,
And gave us hell, for shell on frantic
Hammered on top, but never quite burst through.
Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime

So neck to neck and obstinate knee to
Wrestled those two; and peerless
Could not prevail nor catch at any vantage;
But those huge hands which small had strangled

Not one corner of a foreign
But a span as wide as Europe;
An appearance of a titan's grave,
And the length thereof a thousand miles,

Budging the sluggard ripples of the Somme,
A barge round old Cérisy slowly slewed.
Softly her engines down the current screwed,
And chuckled softly with contented hum

One ever hangs where shelled roads part.
In this war He too lost a limb,
But His disciples hide apart;
And now the Soldiers bear with Him.

Between the brown hands of a
The silver cross was offered to be kissed.
The men came up, lugubrious, but not sad,
And knelt reluctantly, half-prejudiced.(And kissing, kissed the emblem of a creed.)Then mourning women knelt; meek…

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.…

Я тоже видел Бога через грязь,
Что на щеках потрескалась от горестных улыбок.
Война дала беднягам больше куража, чем дикий пляс,
И больше ликованья, чем укачиванье зыбок.Видать, забавно веселиться там,…

Having, with bold Horatius, stamped her feet
And waved a final swashing arabesque
O'er the brave days of old, she ceased to bleat,
Slapped her Macaulay back upon the desk,…

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said

The roads also have their wistful rest,
When the weathercocks perch still and roost,
And the looks of men turn kind to clocks
And the trams go empty to their drome.…

Suddenly night crushed out the day and hurled
Her remnants over cloud-peaks, thunder-walled.
Then fell a stillness such as harks appalled
When far-gone dead return upon the world.There watched I for the Dead; but no ghost woke.…