Wilfred Owen Quotes

All a poet can do today is warn.

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

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

The universal pervasion of ugliness, hideous landscapes, vile noises, foul language...everything. Unnatural, broken, blasted; the distortion of the dead, whose unburiable bodies sit outside the dug outs all day, all night, the most execrable sights on earth. In poetry we call them the most glorious.

Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.

The old Lie:Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier's paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed, - knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.

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

I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears; and caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts; and buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts; and rusted every bayonet with His tears.

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, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

You shall not hear their mirth:
You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mine. These men are worth
Your tears:You are not worth their merriment.

Now begin
Famines of thought and feeling.

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.

These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.

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.