Waxing Poetic: Wilfred Owen

     Wilfred Owen (1893-1928) was an English poet and soldier.  He was one of the leading poets of the First World War.  He worked as a pupil-teacher in a poor country parish until a shortage of money caused him to give up his hopes of studying at the University of London and take a teaching position in Bordeaux.  He was tutoring in the Pyrenees when war was declared and he enlisted shortly afterwards.

      In 1917, he suffered severe concussion and 'trench-fever' while fighting on the Somme and spent time recovering in a hospital near Edinburgh.  While there, he met Siegfried Sassoon who read his poems and offered him encouragement.  He was posted back to France in 1918 where he was killed on the Sombre Canal a week before the Armistice was signed.

     His realistic poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was influenced by his friendship with Siegfried Sassoon and it was in stark contrast to the perception of war at the time.  His poems influenced changing attitudes toward war.  His poetry has a deep sense of compassion as well as a grim realism.

     As illustrated by the following two poems, not all of his poetry focused on grim portrayals of the horrors of war.

Music

I have been urged by earnest violins
       And drunk their mellow sorrows to the slake
Of all my sorrows and my thirsting sins.
       My heart has beaten for a brave drum's sake.
Huge chords have wrought me mighty: I have hurled
       Thuds of gods' thunder. And with old winds pondered
Over the curse of this chaotic world,-
       With low lost winds that maundered as they wandered.

I have been gay with trivial fifes that laugh;
And songs more sweet than possible things are sweet;
And gongs, and oboes. Yet I guessed not half
Life's symphony till I had made hearts beat,
And touched Love's body into trembling cries,
And blown my love's lips into laughs and sighs.

Spells and Incantations
A vague pearl, a wan pearl You showed me once; I peered through far-gone winters Until my mind was fog-bound in that gem. Blue diamonds, cold diamonds You shook before me, so that out of them Glittered and glowed vast diamond dawns of spring. Tiger-eyed rubies, wrathful rubies You rolled. I watched their hot hearts fling Flames from each glaring summer of my life. Quiet amber, mellow amber You lifted; and behold the whole air rife With evening, and the auburn autumn cloud. But pale skin, your pearl skin Show this to me, and I shall have surprise Of every snow-lit dawn before it break. But clear eyes, your fresh eyes Open; that I may laugh, and lightly take All air of early April in one hour. But brown curls, O shadow me with curls, Full of September mist, half-gleam, half-glower, And I shall roam warm nights in lands far south.