Wilfred Owen

Bugles sang, saddening the evening air,
And bugles answered, sorrowful to hear
Voices of boys were by the river-side
Sleep mothered them; and left the twilight sad

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow
Through the park Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,

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 becomes a...

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

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.

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.

His fingers wake, and flutter; up the bed
His eyes come open with a pull of will,
Helped by the yellow mayflowers by his head
The blind-cord drawls across the window-sill…What a smooth floor the ward has

Sit on the bed
I'm blind, and three parts shell
Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall
Both arms have mutinied against me,-brutes

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 Whi...

Seeing we never found gay fairyland(Though still we crouched by bluebells moon by moon)And missed the tide of Lethe; yet are
For that new bridge that leaves old Styx half-spanned;
Nor ever unto Mecca caravanned;
Nor bugled Asgard, s...

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,

Under his helmet, up against his pack,
After so many days of work and waking,
Sleep took him by the brow and laid him back
There, in the happy no-time of his sleeping,