Wilfred Owen Quotes

Consummation is consumption

We cannot consummate our bliss and not consume
All joys are cakes and vanish in eating
All bliss is sugar's melting in the mouth

Futility

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?

All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.

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.

With him they buried the muzzle his
teeth had kissed, And truthfully wrote
the Mother, Tim died smiling.

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 disappointed shells that dropped 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 floundering 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.

All a poet can do today is warn.

"O Life, Life, let me breathe, — a dug-out rat! Not worse than ours the existences rats lead — Nosing along at night down some safe vat, They find a shell-proof home before they rot. Dead men may envy living mites in cheese, Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys, And subdivide, and never come to death, Certainly flowers have the easiest time on earth. "I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone." Shelley would tell me. Shelley would be stunned; The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now. "Pushing up daisies," is their creed, you know. To grain, then, go my fat, to buds my sap, For all the usefulness there is in soap. D'you think the Boche will ever stew man-soup?"

These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.

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

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.

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
That old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

My arms have mutinied against me — brutes!
My fingers fidget like ten idle brats,
My back's been stiff for hours, damned hours.
Death never gives his squad a Stand-at-ease.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend
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
Let us sleep now.

Children are not meant to be studied, but enjoyed. Only by studying to be pleased do we understand them.