We can also feel a sense of love in his tone as he speaks of “...Laughing the love laugh with me” a feeling of joy and also innocence. Sexual imagery is present in the line, “The heat Throbbing between the upland and the peak” obviously romantic resonance are clear here. Also in the line, “Her heart Quivering with passion to my pressed cheek”. This is a light hearted poem, clearly of a teenager depicting life as he saw it.
Another poem Wilfred Owen wrote in the romantic phase was, “On a dream”.
This poem explains the innocence of youth, and how he as a boy, spent many times thinking of love.
In the first stanza the scene is set as Owen lies on his bed, idly thinking, “blank-eyed, in lonely thoughtless thought”. The second stanza we get an understanding that he is visualising a girl who has came looking for him perhaps out of love. “For love of me” but was it someone he knew as he writes, “I knew that lovely head”. This could have been a girl who he holds affection for.
In the third stanza Owens language seems to take a more erotic feel as he talks about himself and this newly experienced girl, “for hours I felt her lips warm on my cheek”. Being more detailed he describes the two lying side by side, “For precious hours her limbs in mine were curled”.
The final line in this poem ends on a sadder note, “And melancholy dawn bestirred the world”. A sense of romantic wistfulness.
Was Owen in this poem, perhaps reciting an earlier event which once occurred or was it he was facing reality and realising it was, just a dream.
The above two poems are examples of the way he had written and it wasn’t until after 1914 he started to write the poems he was well known for with a more mature attitude. Like any other poet Owen was evolving, however it is clear that the psychological impact of the Great War shunted Owen’s development.
The poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est” is a prime example of Owens work after he had experienced war. His tone in this poem is more mature than any previous. It illustrates the genuine suffering the war veterans endured, dispelling all illusions about war and gave a description of the fighter on the Western Front
“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks”, this contradicts the whole idea that the soldier is upright and a dignified hero. From the first line it depicts the gruesome reality of suffering. Here the solider is not proud and dignified, but reduced to the status of a beggar or a sub-cultural being.
In the first stanza the scene is set as in the trenches, where many young men were brutally killed. “Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through the sludge”, also describing the condition of the men. The phrase “Knock-kneed”, is a good use of alliteration to illustrate the appearance of the soldiers gone now is the proud march, to war or the crazed run to battle. Words and phrases that explain they are stunned are, “blood-shod” ,“lame”, “blind”, “Drunk with fatigue”. “And towards our distant rest began to trudge.”,
Perhaps the poet was, in this quote, showing that the soldiers “distant rest” was in fact their final resting place, their death. All these quotations form a slow-moving verse, which is necessary to picture the slow-moving soldiers.
The last line in this verse sets you up nicely for the dramatic, yet very effective impact of the unsuspected “gas-shells dropping softly behind”
“Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!” This line is continued with “An ecstasy of fumbling”, which describes the soldiers in a “happy panic”.
This is needed to show the adrenaline rush of the surprise, it also fits in well with the quick and exciting pace of
this verse. The next line, “Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,” is personification.
It describes the men so panic stricken as they struggle to put on the helmets as if they had a mind of their own. Also because of the soldier’s state of unawareness, because they are blind they are finding it hard to fasten the straps of the helmets. Owen manages to keep the state of the soldiers constant throughout the first four verses.
Although he, and most of the others, manage to fit the gas-masks and therefore saving themselves from a horrendous death. One of the soldiers isn’t as lucky. Owen paints the picture, of a painful death, “As under a green sea, I saw him drowning”.
This last line is one of the most enduring images of death in any war poem. Notice the choice of colour. Owen writes of a “green sea”, the mental image this conjures matches the poet’s mood of sickly death. Also the word “drowning” sums up the whole helplessness of the victim in front of the poet. One assumes that drowning is a cruel, torturous death. The victims reactions from the nerve gas, match those of a person drowning.
The third stanza is shorter than the rest, and recalls the consequences of Owen surviving the gas attack by remembering the affects that it had on him. “In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning”.
The final chapter to the story is one of anger, as he feels sicken by the total myths of war. You do not die a hero, but are treated no better than an animal, “Behind the wagon that we flung him in”.
He writes of the way it is always the innocent who perish, as the negotiators sit in the comfort of their own homes, having to put themselves in little danger. “incurable sores on innocent tongues”. The finishing line tells the whole story, “The old lie; Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori”. (It is fitting and noble to die for ones country).
This is a prime example of the work Owen was producing after he had witnessed the impact of war for himself.
“Anthem for a doomed youth”, is yet again another fine poem written during the war. Owen here starts the first stanza with the mood of anger. The beginning sentence tells us this, “What passing-bells for those who die as cattle”. This stanza is fast paced and has a religious tone. “Can patter out their hasty orisons.” The poet seems to be angry at the religious who encourage these wrongful acts, but yet stand in church every week and preach of divine work. “Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs”. These church goers obviously know very little if anything, about what really happens at war, and this sickens the poet. The only sounds heard by those at war are the constant rattle of guns, “The shrill, demented choirs of waling shells”.
There is no ceremony when these young breathe their last.
The second part of this poem is much slower paced and more sombre. It elaborates on the way the dead are treated, with no special treatment or ceremony. “What candles may be held to speed them all”. This is depicting the scene of a wake house, where candles are lit for the soul of the dead. But all is so different at war, as these soldiers who are fighting for their country are treated no better than an animal heading off to the slaughter house.
The only place where these boys will be mourned is in their homeland, by the families and loved ones they left behind. “The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall”. The finishing line ends on a sadder note, “And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds”.
Although Owen was a hero, receiving a commendation award, he was not lucky enough to survive the war. Through his words, we experience his disillusionment, his suffering, and the horrors that he witnessed. Even if he had survived, there's no doubt that he was irreversibly changed by his war experiences.
“He radically remodelled traditional poetics by means of technical and colloquial innovation in his sequence of war poems”.
Wilfred Owen was a remarkable young man. When he died he was just 25 years old, but his poetry has proved enduring and influential and is among the best known in the English language. He left behind a unique testament to the horrific impact of the First World War on an entire generation of young soldier
Owen gives the reader an anti-war message, which has been written nearly one hundred years ago, yet it still has relevance today.
Bibliography
Breen, J (1988). Wilfred Owen Selected poetry and prose.
2nd ed. NY & London: Routledge.
Humanities .. Year two
Irish and English Literature .. Paul Torley
Yvonne O’Callaghan