Poems

POEMS by Wilfred Owen With an Introduction by Siegfried Sassoon Introduction

In writing an Introduction such as this it is good to be brief. The poems printed in this book need no preliminary commendations from me or anyone else. The author has left us his own fragmentary but impressive Foreword; this, and his Poems, can speak for him, backed by the authority of his experience as an infantry soldier, and sustained by nobility and originality of style. All that was strongest in Wilfred Owen survives in his poems; any superficial impressions of his personality, any records of his conversation, behaviour, or appearance, would be irrelevant and unseemly. The curiosity which demands such morsels would be incapable of appreciating the richness of his work.

The discussion of his experiments in assonance and dissonance (of which 'Strange Meeting' is the finest example) may be left to the professional critics of verse, the majority of whom will be more preoccupied with such technical details than with the profound humanity of the self- revelation manifested in such magnificent lines as those at the end of his 'Apologia pro Poemate Meo', and in that other poem which he named 'Greater Love'.

The importance of his contribution to the literature of the War cannot be decided by those who, like myself, both admired him as a poet and valued him as a friend. His conclusions about War are so entirely in accordance with my own that I cannot attempt to judge his work with any critical detachment. I can only affirm that he was a man of absolute integrity of mind. He never wrote his poems (as so many war-poets did) to make the effect of a personal gesture. He pitied others; he did not pity himself. In the last year of his life he attained a clear vision of what he needed to say, and these poems survive him as his true and splendid testament.

Wilfred Owen was born at Oswestry on 18th March 1893. He was educated at the Birkenhead Institute, and matriculated at London University in 1910. In 1913 he obtained a private tutorship near Bordeaux, where he remained until 1915. During this period he became acquainted with the eminent French poet, Laurent Tailhade, to whom he showed his early verses, and from whom he received considerable encouragement. In 1915, in spite of delicate health, he joined the Artists' Rifles O.T.C., was gazetted to the Manchester Regiment, and served with their 2nd Battalion in France from December 1916 to June 1917, when he was invalided home. Fourteen months later he returned to the Western Front and served with the same Battalion, ultimately commanding a Company.

He was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry while taking part in some heavy fighting on 1st October. He was killed on 4th November 1918, while endeavouring to get his men across the Sambre Canal.

A month before his death he wrote to his mother: "My nerves are in perfect order. I came out again in order to help these boys; directly, by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by watching their sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can." Let his own words be his epitaph:—

POEMS Preface

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,

CONTENTS Introduction POEMS Preface Strange Meeting Greater Love Apologia pro Poemate Meo The Show Mental Cases Parable of the Old Men and the Young Arms and the Boy Anthem for Doomed Youth The Send-off Insensibility Dulce et Decorum est The Sentry The Dead-Beat Exposure Spring Offensive The Chances S. I. W. Futility Smile, Smile, Smile Conscious A Terre Wild with all Regrets Disabled Appendix

Strange Meeting Greater Love Apologia pro Poemate Meo The Show Mental Cases Parable of the Old Men and the Young Arms and the Boy Anthem for Doomed Youth The Send-off Insensibility Dulce et Decorum est The Sentry The Dead-Beat Exposure Spring Offensive The Chances S. I. W. Futility Smile, Smile, Smile Conscious A Terre Wild with all Regrets Disabled The End

[End of original text.]

Appendix

General Notes:—

Due to the general circumstances surrounding Wilfred Owen, and his death one week before the war ended, it should be noted that these poems are not all in their final form. Owen had only had a few of his poems published during his lifetime, and his papers were in a state of disarray when Siegfried Sassoon, his friend and fellow poet, put together this volume. The 1920 edition was the first edition of Owen's poems, the 1921 reprint (of which this is a transcript) added one more—and nothing else happened until Edmund Blunden's 1931 edition. Even with that edition, there remained gaps, and several more editions added more and more poems and fragments, in various forms, as it was difficult to tell which of Owen's drafts were his final ones, until Jon Stallworthy's "Complete Poems and Fragments" (1983) included all that could be found, and tried to put them in chronological order, with the latest revisions, etc.

Therefore, it should not be surprising if some or most of these poems differ from later editions.

After Owen's death, his writings gradually gained pre-eminence, so that, although virtually unknown during the war, he came into high regard. Benjamin Britten, the British composer who set nine of Owen's works as the text of his "War Requiem" (shortly after the Second World War), called Owen "by far our greatest war poet, and one of the most original poets of this century." (Owen is especially noted for his use of pararhyme.) Five of those nine texts are some form of poems included here, to wit: 'Anthem for Doomed Youth', 'Futility', 'Parable of the Old Men and the Young', 'The End', and 'Strange Meeting'. The other four were '[Bugles Sang]', 'The Next War', 'Sonnet [Be slowly lifted up]' and 'At a Calvary Near the Ancre'—all of which the reader may wish to pursue, being some of Owen's finest work. Fortunately, the poem which I consider his best, and which is one of his most quoted—'Dulce et Decorum est', is included in this volume.

Transcriber's Specific Notes:—

Blighty: England, or a wound that would take a soldier home (to England).

S. I. W.: Self Inflicted Wound.

Parable of the Old Men and the Young: A retold story from the Bible, but with a different ending. The phrase "Abram bound the youth with belts and straps" refers to the youth who went to war, with all their equipment belted and strapped on. Other versions of this poem have an additional line.

Dulce et Decorum est: The phrase "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" is a Latin phrase from Horace, and translates literally something like "Sweet and proper it is for your country (fatherland) to die." The poem was originally intended to be addressed to an author who had written war poems for children. "Dim through the misty panes . . ." should be understood by anyone who has worn a gas mask.

Alan R. Light. Monroe, North Carolina, July, 1997.