Wilfred Owen

“Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.”

“All a poet can do today is warn.”

“Be bullied, be outraged, be killed, but do not kill.”

“You shall not hear their mirth:You shall not come to think them well contentBy any jest of mine. These men are worthYour tears:You are not worth their merriment.”

“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.”

“The English say, Yours Truly, and mean it. The Italians say, I kiss your feet, and mean, I kick your head.”

“Numbers of the old people cannot read. Those who can seldom do.”

“I find purer philosophy in a Poem than in a Conclusion of Geometry, a chemical analysis, or a physical law.”

“I was a boy when I first realized that the fullest life liveable was a Poet's.”

“Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout"I see your lights!" But ours had long died out.”

“When I begin to eliminate from the list all those professions which are impossible from a financial point of view and then those which I feel disinclined to - it leaves nothing.”

“If I have got to be a soldier, I must be a good one, anything else is unthinkable.”

“These men are worth your tears. You are not worth their merriment.”

“All theological lore is growing distasteful to me. All my recent excursions into such fields proves it to be a shifting, hypothetical, doubt-fostering, dusty, and unprofitable study.”

“And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan.And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hidIts bruises in the earth, but crawled no further,Showed me its feet, the feet of many men,And the fresh-severed head of it, my head.”

“A Poem does not grow by jerks. As trees in Spring produce a new ring of tissue, so does every poet put forth a fresh outlay of stuff at the same season.”

“As bronze may be much beautified by lying in the dark damp soil, so men who fade in dust of warfare fade fairer, and sorrow blooms their soul.”

“The war effects me less than it ought. I can do no service to anybody by agitating for news or making dole over the slaughter.”

“Never fear: Thank Home, and Poetry, and the Force behind both.”

“All I ask is to be held above the barren wastes of want.”