Poems Read Online

Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids’,

Watch my dreams still; but I forgot him there

In posting next for duty, and sending a scout

To beg a stretcher somewhere, and floundering about

To other posts under the shrieking air.

* * *

Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed,

And one who would have drowned himself for good, –

I try not to remember these things now.

Let dread hark back for one word only: how

Half-listening to that sentry’s moans and jumps,

And the wild chattering of his shivered teeth,

Renewed most horribly whenever crumps

Pummelled the roof and slogged the air beneath –

Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout

‘I see your lights!’ But ours had long died out.

Smile, Smile, Smile

Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned

Yesterday’s Mail; the casualties (typed small)

And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.

Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned

For, said the paper, ‘when this war is done

The men’s first instincts will be making homes.

Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes,

It being certain war has but begun.

Peace would do wrong to our undying dead, –

The sons we offered might regret they died

If we got nothing lasting in their stead.

We must be solidly indemnified.

Though all be worthy Victory which all bought,

We rulers sitting in this ancient spot

Would wrong our very selves if we forgot

The greatest glory will be theirs who fought,

Who kept this nation in integrity.’

Nation? – The half-limbed readers did not chafe

But smiled at one another curiously

Like secret men who know their secret safe.

(This is the thing they know and never speak,

That England one by one had fled to France,

Not many elsewhere now, save under France.)

Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week,

And people in whose voice real feeling rings

Say: How they smile! They’re happy now, poor things.

September 23rd 1918

The End

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? –

Fill the void veins of Life 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 sea, be dried.’

Strange Meeting

It seemed that out of battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites 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 that 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.

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.

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 …’

THE BEGINNING

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PENGUIN CLASSICS

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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

The first selection of Wilfred Owen’s poetry, assembled by his friend and mentor Siegfried Sassoon, was published posthumously in 1920 under the title Poems. This volume follows the order, titles and text of the expanded edition, The Poems of Wilfred Owen, which was edited by Edmund Blunden and published in 1931.

This edition first published in Penguin Classics 2017

Cover design and illustration: Coraline Bickford-Smith

ISBN: 978-0-241-30325-2