Personal Choice Volume 2 No.31

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?

Wilfred Owen

This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, dominion or power, except War. Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry. The subject of it is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend and mentor Siegfried Sassoon and stood in stark contrast both to the public perception of war at the time and to the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets such as Rupert Brooke. He was killed on November 4, 1918, while attempting to lead his men across the Sambre-Oise canal at Ors in France. He was 25 years old. The news reached his parents on November 11, Armistice Day.

 My grandfather fought and was gassed at Ypres in Belgium

during WW1. My father flew Lancaster bombers during WW2. I read in all of Owen’s poetry what they never talked about with anyone. I have taught the poetry for over three decades

and it is I think the finest verse in our language.