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.
Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
(If I thought the letter of this book would last, I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives – survives Prussia – my ambition and those names will have achieved fresher fields than Flanders …)
WILFRED OWEN: draft Preface (?May 1918) for a collection of war poems that he hoped to publish in 1919
The most formative influence in Owen’s youth was the discovery of Keats (possibly as early as 1903) and the Bible. His mother, Susan Owen, was a devout Evangelical Christian, and when the family moved to Shrewsbury, where his father had been appointed Assistant Superintendent of the Joint Railways, Wilfred would read each day a passage from the Bible – appointed by the Scripture Union – and on Sundays would sometimes rearrange his parents’ sitting room so that it represented a church. His mother made him a surplice out of linen and a cardboard mitre, and he would summon the family to an evening service and deliver a sermon. The breadth of his religious knowledge can be seen in the biblical references in his poetry. He left school in 1911, and when he failed to win a scholarship to the University of London that would have helped with the fees, he took up an unpaid position as lay assistant to the Revd Herbert Wigan, Vicar of Dunsden, a village not far from Reading. Wigan gave him free board and lodging, and Owen, as well as providing practical help to the poor of the parish, studied English and Botany at University College, Reading. Once again he failed the scholarship exam and, as the study of English became increasingly important in his life, he took up a part-time post, teaching English at the Berlitz School in Bordeaux. This two-year love affair with French life, language, literature and culture was shattered on 4 August 1914, when Germany invaded Belgium.
Owen enlisted in the Artists’ Rifles on 21 October 1915, spent seven and a half months training at Hare Hall Camp in Essex, was commissioned into the Manchester Regiment, crossed the Channel on 29 December and in the second week of January 1917 led his platoon into battle. Letters to his mother describe his experiences. He was hospitalized for a fortnight, having fallen down a shell hole, where he spent three days with only a candle as company; he was treated for sickness, but rejoined his battalion and experienced fierce fighting; on one occasion he was blown out of a trench during an artillery bombardment. Suffering from shell shock, he was invalided back to England, and then to Craiglockhart War Hospital on the outskirts of Edinburgh. His doctor, Captain Arthur Brock, RAMC, sought to heal Owen by means of a work-cure and set him a long poem to write – which became ‘The Wrestlers’. It was at Craiglockhart that Owen met Siegfried Sassoon, whose The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, recently published, had a huge effect on Owen, especially the ‘trench sketches’. Sassoon’s influence on Owen can be seen from the final manuscript draft of ‘Anthem for doomed youth’, which contains a number of the older poet’s suggestions and cancellations written in pencil. Sassoon not only supplied the title but made several telling contributions: ‘The shrill disconsolate choirs of wailing shells’ becomes ‘The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells’; ‘And bugles calling sad across the shires’ becomes ‘And bugles calling for them from sad shires’; and ‘Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds’ becomes ‘Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds’. The older poet gave Owen advice on how to channel nightmarish experiences into poems, and introduced him to Robert Graves, Arnold Bennett and H. G. Wells, as well as to Robert Ross, who, like Sassoon, was gay. Though Owen shared their sexual orientation, his relationship with them probably remained platonic. Pat Barker’s novel Regeneration (1991) gives a masterly reconstruction of Sassoon’s and Owen’s relationship at Craiglockhart.
When Sassoon was posted overseas to France, Owen was transferred to another camp, at Ripon, where he wrote or revised many of his most celebrated poems, such as ‘Strange meeting’ and ‘Futility’. Owen returned to France at the end of August 1918. He was awarded the Military Cross for his part in the assault on Germany’s Beaurevoir–Fonsomme Line, but did not live to wear it: he was killed on 4 November, helping his platoon assemble a pontoon bridge to cross the Sambre and Oise Canal.
Halted against the shade of a last hill
They fed, and eased of pack-loads, were at ease;
And leaning on the nearest chest or knees
Carelessly slept.
But many there stood still
To face the stark blank sky beyond the ridge,
Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.
Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge;
And though the summer oozed into their veins
Like an injected drug for their bodies’ pains,
Sharp on their souls hung the imminent ridge of grass,
Fearfully flashed the sky’s mysterious glass.
Hour after hour they ponder the warm field
And the far valley behind, where buttercups
Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up;
When even the little brambles would not yield
But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing arms.
They breathe like trees unstirred.
Till like a cold gust thrills the little word
At which each body and its soul begird
And tighten them for battle. No alarms
Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste, –
Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced
The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.
O larger shone that smile against the sun, –
Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.
So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together
Over an open stretch of herb and heather
Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned
With fury against them; earth set sudden cups
In thousands for their blood; and the green slope
Chasmed and deepened sheer to infinite space.
Of them who running on that last high place2
Breasted the surf of bullets, or went up
On the hot blast and fury of hell’s upsurge,
Or plunged and fell away past this world’s verge,
Some say God caught them even before they fell.
But what say such as from existence’ brink
Ventured but drave too swift to sink,
The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,
And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames
With superhuman inhumanities,
Long-famous glories, immemorial shames –
And crawling slowly back, have by degrees
Regained cool peaceful air in wonder –
Why speak not they of comrades that went under?
She2 sleeps on soft, last breaths; but no ghost looms
Out of the stillness of her palace wall,
Her wall of boys on boys and dooms on dooms.
She dreams of golden gardens and sweet glooms,
Not marvelling why her roses never fall
Nor what red mouths were torn to make their blooms.
The shades keep down which well might roam her hall.
Quiet their blood lies in her crimson rooms
And she is not afraid of their footfall.
They move not from her tapestries, their pall,
Nor pace her terraces, their hecatombs3,
Lest aught she be disturbed, or grieved at all.
What passing-bells2 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.3
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 good-byes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient4 minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
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.
The shadow of the morrow weighed on men.
Voices of old despondency resigned,
Bowed by the shadow of the morrow, slept. […]
Out there, we walked quite friendly up to Death, –
Sat down and ate beside him, cool and bland, –
Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand.
We’ve sniffed the green thick odour of his breath, –
Our eyes wept, but our courage didn’t writhe.
He’s spat at us with bullets and he’s coughed
Shrapnel. We chorused if he sang aloft;
We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe.
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 fights on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.
On Seeing a Piece of Our Heavy Artillery
Brought into Action
Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm,
Great Gun towering towards Heaven, about to curse;
[Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse
Huge imprecations like a blasting charm!]
Reach at that Arrogance which needs thy harm,
And beat it down before its sins grow worse;
[Spend our resentment, cannon, – yea, disburse
Our gold in shapes of flame, our breaths in storm.
Yet, for men’s sakes whom thy vast malison1
Must wither innocent of enmity,
Be not withdrawn, dark arm, thy spoilure done,
Safe to the bosom of our prosperity.]
But when thy spell be cast complete and whole,
May God curse thee, and cut thee from our soul!
Move him into the sun –
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds –
Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
– O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?
(Weisgall)
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, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him, thy son.
Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,
A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
After the blast of lightning from the east,
The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot Throne;
After the drums of time have rolled and ceased,
And by the bronze west long retreat is blown,
Shall Life renew these bodies? Of a truth
All death will he annul, all tears assuage?
Or fill these void veins full again with youth,
And wash, with an immortal water, age?
When I do ask white Age, he saith not so:
‘My head hangs weighed with snow,’
And when I hearken to the Earth, she saith:
‘My fiery heart shrinks, aching. It is death.
Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified,
Nor my titanic tears, the seas, be dried.’
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.3
Near Golgotha4 strolls many a priest,
And in their faces there is pride
That they were flesh-marked5 by the Beast6
By whom the gentle Christ’s denied.
The scribes on all the people shove
And bawl allegiance to the state,
But they who love the greater love
Lay down their life; they do not hate.
It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites2 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 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 progress.
[Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
To] miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
[Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.3
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.]
‘I am the enemy you killed, my friend.4
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.5
Let us sleep now …’
Leaves
Murmuring by myriads in the shimmering trees.
Lives
Wakening with wonder in the Pyrenees.
Birds
Cheerily chirping in the early day.
Bards
Singing of summer scything thro’ the hay.
Bees
Shaking the heavy dews from bloom and frond.
Boys
Bursting the surface of the ebony pond.
Flashes
Of swimmers carving thro’ the sparkling cold.
Fleshes
Gleaming with wetness to the morning gold.
A mead
Bordered about with warbling waterbrooks.
A maid
Laughing the love-laugh with me; proud of looks.
The heat
Throbbing between the upland and the peak.
Her heart
Quivering with passion to my pressed cheek.
Braiding
Of floating flames across the mountain brow.
Of stillness and a sighing of the bough.
Stirs
Of leaflets in the gloom; soft petal-showers;
Stars
Expanding with the starr’d nocturnal flowers.