Poems Read Online

I’m blind, and three parts shell.

Be careful; can’t shake hands now; never shall.

Both arms have mutinied against me, – brutes.

My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.

I tried to peg out soldierly, – no use!

One dies of war like any old disease.

This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.

I have my medals? – Discs to make eyes close.

My glorious ribbons? – Ripped from my own back

In scarlet shreds. (That’s for your poetry book.)

A short life and a merry one, my buck!

We used to say we’d hate to live dead-old, –

Yet now … I’d willingly be puffy, bald,

And patriotic. Buffers catch from boys

At least the jokes hurled at them. I suppose

Little I’d ever teach a son, but hitting,

Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting.

Well, that’s what I learnt, – that, and making money.

Your fifty years ahead seem none too many?

Tell me how long I’ve got? God! For one year

To help myself to nothing more than air!

One Spring! Is one too good to spare, too long?

Spring wind would work its own way to my lung,

And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots.

My servant’s lamed, but listen how he shouts!

When I’m lugged out, he’ll still be good for that.

Here in this mummy-case, you know, I’ve thought

How well I might have swept his floors for ever.

I’d ask no nights off when the bustle’s over,

Enjoying so the dirt. Who’s prejudiced

Against a grimed hand when his own’s quite dust,

Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn,

Less warm than dust that mixes with arms’ tan?

I’d love to be a sweep, now, black as Town,

Yes, or a muckman. Must I be his load?

O Life, Life, let me breathe, – a dug-out rat!

Not worse than ours the lives rats lead –

Nosing along at night down some safe rut,

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?

Some day, no doubt, if …

Friend, be very sure

I shall be better off with plants that share

More peaceably the meadow and the shower.

Soft rains will touch me, – as they could touch once,

And nothing but the sun shall make me ware.

Your guns may crash around me. I’ll not hear;

Or, if I wince, I shall not know I wince.

Don’t take my soul’s poor comfort for your jest.

Soldiers may grow a soul when turned to fronds,

But here the thing’s best left at home with friends.

My soul’s a little grief, grappling your chest,

To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased

On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds.

Carry my crying spirit till it’s weaned

To do without what blood remained these wounds.

Wild with All Regrets

(Another Version of ‘À Terre’)
To Siegfried Sassoon

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 can’t read. There: it’s no use. Take your book.

A short life and a merry one, my buck!

We said we’d hate to grow dead-old. But now,

Not to live old seems awful: not to renew

My boyhood with my boys, and teach ’em hitting,

Shooting and hunting, – and all the arts of hurting!

– Well, that’s what I learnt. That, and making money.

Your fifty years in store seem none too many,

But I’ve five minutes. God! For just two years

To help myself to this good air of yours!

One Spring! Is one too hard to spare? Too long?

Spring air would find its own way to my lung,

And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots.

* * *

Yes, there’s the orderly. He’ll change the sheets

When I’m lugged out. Oh, couldn’t I do that?

Here in this coffin of a bed, I’ve thought

I’d like to kneel and sweep his floors for ever, –

And ask no nights off when the bustle’s over,

For I’d enjoy the dirt. Who’s prejudiced

Against a grimed hand when his own’s quite dust, –

Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn?

Dear dust – in rooms, on roads, on faces’ tan!

I’d love to be a sweep’s boy, black as Town;

Yes, or a muck-man. Must I be his load?

A flea would do. If one chap wasn’t bloody,

Or went stone-cold, I’d find another body.

* * *

Which I shan’t manage now. Unless it’s yours.

I shall stay in you, friend, for some few hours.

You’ll feel my heavy spirit chill your chest,

And climb your throat on sobs, until it’s chased

On sighs, and wiped from off your lips by wind.

I think on your rich breathing, brother, I’ll be weaned

To do without what blood remained me from my wound.

December 5, 1917

Winter Song

The browns, the olives, and the yellows died,

And were swept up to heaven; where they glowed

Each dawn and set of sun till Christmastide,

And when the land lay pale for them, pale-snowed,

Fell back, and down the snow-drifts flamed and flowed.

From off your face, into the winds of winter,

The sun-brown and the summer-gold are blowing;

But they shall gleam again with spiritual glinter,

When paler beauty on your brows falls snowing,

And through those snows my looks shall be soft-going.

October 18, 1917

Hospital Barge at Cérisy

Budging the sluggard ripples of the Somme,

A barge round old Cérisy slowly slewed.

Softly her engines down the current screwed

And chuckled softly with contented hum,

Till fairy tinklings struck their croonings dumb,

The waters rumpling at the stern subdued.

The lock-gate took her bulging amplitude.

Gently into the gurgling lock she swum.

One, reading by that sunset raised his eyes

To watch her lessening westward quietly;

Till, as she neared the bend, her funnel screamed.

And that long lamentation made him wise

How unto Avalon in agony

Kings passed in the dark barge which Merlin dreamed.

December 8, 1917

Six O’Clock in Princes Street

In twos and threes, they have not far to roam,

Crowds that thread eastward, gay of eyes;

Those seek no further than their quiet home,

Wives, walking westward, slow and wise.

Neither should I go fooling over clouds,

Following gleams unsafe, untrue,

And tiring after beauty through star-crowds,

Dared I go side by side with you;

Or be you on the gutter where you stand,

Pale rain-flawed phantom of the place,

With news of all the nations in your hand,

And all their sorrows in your face.

The Roads Also

The roads also have their wistful rest,

When the weathercocks perch still and roost,

And the town is [quiet like] a candle-lit room –

The streets also dream their dream.

The old houses muse of the old days

And their fond trees leaning on them doze,

On their steps chatter and clatter stops,

On their doors a strange hand taps.

Men remember alien [   ] ardours

As the dusk unearths old mournful odours.

In the garden unborn child souls wail

And the dead scribble on walls.

Though their own child cry for them in tears,

Women weep but hear no sound upstairs.

They believe in loves they had not lived

And in passion past the reach of the stairs

To the world’s towers or stars.

This is the Track

This is the track my life is setting on,

Spacious the spanless way I wend;

The blackness of darkness may be held for me?

And barren plunging without end?

Why dare I fear? For other wandering souls

Burn through the night of that far bourne.

And they are light unto themselves; and aureoles

Self-radiated there are worn.

And when in after-times we make return

Round solar bounds awhile to run,

They gather many satellites astern

And turn aside the very sun.

The Calls

A dismal fog-hoarse siren howls at dawn.

I watch the man it calls for, pushed and drawn

Backwards and forwards, helpless as a pawn.

But I’m lazy, and his work’s crazy.

Quick treble bells begin at nine o’clock,

Scuttling the schoolboy pulling up his sock,

Scaring the late girl in the inky frock.

I must be crazy; I learn from the daisy.

Stern bells annoy the rooks and doves at ten.

I watch the verger close the doors, and when

I hear the organ moan the first amen,

Sing my religions – same as pigeons.

A blatant bugle tears my afternoons.

Out clump the clumsy Tommies by platoons,

Trying to keep in step with rag-time tunes,

But I sit still; I’ve done my drill.

Miners

There was a whispering in my hearth,

A sigh of the coal,

Grown wistful of a former earth

It might recall.

I listened for a tale of leaves

And smothered ferns,

Frond-forests, and the low, sly lives

Before the fauns.

My fire might show steam-phantoms simmer

From Time’s old cauldron,

Before the birds made nests in summer,

Or men had children.

But the coals were murmuring of their mine,

And moans down there

Of boys that slept wry sleep, and men

Writhing for air.

And I saw white bones in the cinder-shard.

Bones without number;

For many hearts with coal are charred

And few remember.

I thought of some who worked dark pits

Of war, and died

Digging the rock where Death reputes

Peace lies indeed.

Comforted years will sit soft-chaired

In rooms of amber;

The years will stretch their hands, well-cheered

By our life’s ember.

The centuries will burn rich loads

With which we groaned,

Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids

While songs are crooned.

But they will not dream of us poor lads,

Lost in the ground.

And I Must Go

Gongs hum and buzz like saucepan-lid at dusk,

I see a food-hog whet his gold-filled tusk

To eat less bread, and more luxurious rusk.

Then sometimes late at night my window bumps

From gunnery-practice, till my small heart thumps

And listens for the shell-shrieks and the crumps,

But that’s not all.

For leaning out last midnight on my sill

I heard the sighs of men, that have no skill

To speak of their distress, no, nor the will!

A voice I know. And I must go.

The Promisers

When I awoke, the glancing day looked gay;

The air said: Fare you fleetly; you will meet him!

And when the prosp’rous sun was well begun,

I heard a bird say: Sweetly you shall greet him!

The sun fell strong and bold upon my shoulder;

It hung, it clung as it were my friend’s arm.

The birds fifed on before, shrill-piping pipers,

Right down to town; and there they ceased to charm.

And there I wandered till the noon came soon,

And chimed: The time is hastening with his face!

Sly twilight said: I bring him; wait till late!

But darkness harked forlorn to my lone pace.

Training

Not this week nor this month dare I lie down

In languor under lime trees or smooth smile.

Love must not kiss my face pale that is brown.

My lips, parting, shall drink space, mile by mile;

Strong meats be all my hunger; my renown

Be the clean beauty of speed and pride of style.

Cold winds encountered on the racing Down

Shall thrill my heated bareness; but awhile

None else may meet me till I wear my Crown.

June 1918

The Kind Ghosts

She 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 hecatombs,

Lest aught she be disturbed, or grieved at all.

To My Friend

(With an Identity Disc)

If ever I had dreamed of my dead name

High in the heart of London, unsurpassed

By Time for ever, and the Fugitive, Fame,

There seeking a long sanctuary at last, –

Or if I onetime hoped to hide its shame,

– Shame of success, and sorrow of defeats, –

Under those holy cypresses, the same

That shade always the quiet place of Keats,

Now rather thank I God there is no risk

Of gravers scoring it with florid screed.

Let my inscription be this soldier’s disc …

Wear it, sweet friend, inscribe no date nor deed.

But may thy heart-beat kiss it, night and day,

Until the name grow blurred and fade away.

1918

Inspection

‘You! What d’you mean by this?’ I rapped.

‘You dare come on parade like this?’

‘Please, sir, it’s –’ ‘’Old yer mouth,’ the sergeant snapped.

‘I take ’is name, sir?’ – ‘Please, and then dismiss.’

Some days ‘confined to camp’ he got,

For being ‘dirty on parade’.

He told me afterwards, the damnèd spot

Was blood, his own. ‘Well, blood is dirt,’ I said.

‘Blood’s dirt,’ he laughed, looking away,

Far off to where his wound had bled

And almost merged for ever into clay.

‘The world is washing out its stains,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t like our cheeks so red.

Young blood’s its great objection.

But when we’re duly white-washed, being dead,

The race will bear Field Marshal God’s inspection.’

Fragment: A Farewell

I saw his round mouth’s crimson deepen as it fell,

Like a Sun, in his last deep hour;

Watched the magnificent recession of farewell,

Clouding, half gleam, half glower,

And a last splendour burn the heavens of his cheek.

And in his eyes

The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,

In different skies.

Fragment: The Abyss of War

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.

Like pearls which noble women wear

And, tarnishing, awhile confide

Unto the old salt sea to feed,

Many return more lustrous than they were.

But what of them buried profound,

Buried where we can no more find,

Who [           ]

Lie dark for ever under abysmal war?

At a Calvary near the Ancre

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.

Near Golgotha strolls many a priest,

And in their faces there is pride

That they were flesh-marked by the Beast

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.

Le Christianisme

So the church Christ was hit and buried

Under its rubbish and its rubble.

In cellars, packed-up saints lie serried,

Well out of hearing of our trouble.

One Virgin still immaculate

Smiles on for war to flatter her.

She’s halo’d with an old tin hat,

But a piece of hell will batter her.

Quivières

Spring Offensive

Halted against the shade of a last hill,

They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease

And, finding comfortable chests and 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,

For though the summer oozed into their veins

Like an injected drug for their bodies’ pains,

Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,

Fearfully flashed the sky’s mysterious glass.

Hour after hour they ponder the warm field –

And the far valley behind, where the buttercup

Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,

Where even the little brambles would not yield,

But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;

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 steepened sheer to infinite space.

* * *

Of them who running on that last high place

Leapt to swift unseen 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?

The Sentry

We’d found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew,

And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell

Hammered on top, but never quite burst through.

Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime

Kept slush waist-high that rising hour by hour,

Choked up the steps too thick with clay to climb.

What murk of air remained stank old, and sour

With fumes of whizz-bangs, and the smell of men

Who’d lived there years, and left their curse in the den,

If not their corpses …

There we herded from the blast

Of whizz-bangs, but one found our door at last, –

Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles.

And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping

And splashing in the flood, deluging muck –

The sentry’s body; then his rifle, handles

Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck.

We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined,

‘O sir, my eyes – I’m blind – I’m blind, I’m blind!’

Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids

And said if he could see the least blurred light

He was not blind; in time he’d get all right.

‘I can’t,’ he sobbed. 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