Complete Works of Wilfred Owen Read online

  WILFRED OWEN

  (1893-1918)

  Contents

  The Poetry Collections

  POEMS, 1920

  THE COMPLETE POEMS

  THE FRAGMENTS

  The Poems

  LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  The Letters

  THE LETTERS OF WILFRED OWEN

  INDEX OF LETTERS BY YEAR OF COMPOSITION

  LIST OF CORRESPONDENTS AND DATES

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2012

  Version 1

  WILFRED OWEN

  By Delphi Classics, 2012

  COPYRIGHT

  Wilfred Owen - Delphi Poets Series

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2015.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

  NOTE

  When reading poetry on an eReader, it is advisable to use a small font size, which will allow the lines of poetry to display correctly.

  Also available:

  Explore War Poets with Delphi Classics

  For the first time in publishing history, readers can explore all the poems, rare fragments and the poets’ letters.

  www.delphiclassics.com

  The Poetry Collections

  ‘Plas Wilmot’, Weston Lane, near Oswestry in Shropshire — Owen’s birthplace

  Owen’s parents, c. 1914

  POEMS, 1920

  Regarded by many critics as the greatest of the War poets, Wilfred Owen created a brief body of poetry that would change the public’s perception of war. Previously poets depicted war as a patriotic and grand affair, full of noble deeds and great adventures. But it was the work of Owen and other poets like Siegfried Sassoon that brought home the true nature of war, including the horrors of trench and gas warfare, as well as the sensitive portrayal of the soldiers’ experiences of war.

  Born to a middle-class family, Owen grew up in Oswestry in Shropshire, on the border between Wales and England. He was interested in poetry from a young age, particularly cherishing the works of Keats and Shelley. Owen had been writing poetry himself for some years before the outbreak of war in 1914 and he later wrote that his poetic beginnings originated from a visit to Broxton by the Hill, when he was ten years old. Undoubtedly the Romantic poets had the greatest influence on the style of Owen’s early poetry.

  On 21 October 1915, Owen enlisted in the Artists’ Rifles Officers’ Training Corps. For the next seven months, he trained at the Hare Hall Camp in Essex. On 4 June 1916 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment. Starting the war as an optimistic young man, he was to change drastically in character forever, mostly due to two traumatic experiences. Firstly, he was blown high into the air by a trench mortar, landing among the remains of a fellow officer; and secondly, he became trapped for several days in an old German dugout. Following these two events, Owen was diagnosed as suffering from shell shock and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh for treatment. It was while recuperating at Craiglockhart that he met his fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon, which encounter would result in changing the course of Owen’s life and writing.

  Sassoon had a profound effect on the young soldier’s poetic voice and some of Owen’s most celebrated poems, including Dulce et Decorum Est and Anthem for Doomed Youth, were directly affected by Sassoon’s influence. Many manuscript copies of the poems survive, which are clearly annotated in Sassoon’s handwriting. Owen was always in awe of his older friend, once writing to his mother that he “was not worthy to light Sassoon’s pipe”. Nevertheless, Owen’s poetry would eventually be more widely acclaimed than that of his mentor.

  Owen’s poetry underwent significant changes in 1917. His doctor at Craiglockhart, Arthur Brock, encouraged the young poet to translate his experiences in writing, specifically the horrors he relived in his dreams. Sassoon, who was influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis, also encouraged Owen to include satire and a more graphic use of language and realism. Owen was intrigued with the concept of ‘writing from experience’, entirely contrary to his previous romantic style. But where Owen advances further than many of the other war poets, perhaps even Sassoon himself, was not only his depiction of the gritty realism of war, but also his sympathetic portrayal of the soldiers’ experiences. He created a poetic synthesis of potent imagery and sensitive thought, creating a style of war poetry that was unprecedented and rich in depth.

  In July 1918, Owen returned to active service in France, although he could have remained on home-duty indefinitely. His decision was almost wholly the result of Sassoon’s being sent back to England, after being shot in the head in a friendly fire incident and put on sick-leave for the remaining duration of the war. Owen saw it as his patriotic duty to take Sassoon’s place at the front and continue to write about the horrific realities of the war experienced by the soldiers. Sassoon was violently opposed to Owen returning to the trenches, threatening to “stab him in the leg” if he attempted to go. Aware of his attitude, Owen left for France in secret. Tragically, he was killed in action on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal, exactly one week before the signing of the Armistice and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant the day after his death. His mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice Day, as the church bells were ringing out in celebration.

  Preserving Owen’s works from obscurity, Sassoon was directly responsible for promoting his poetry after the war. Sassoon edited Owen’s manuscripts and was instrumental in the making of Owen as a great poet. Only five of Owen’s poems were published before his death, with one in fragmentary form. In 1920, Sassoon published, with an introduction by himself, the following collection of Owen’s poetry, featuring 18 of his most accomplished poems.

  Almost all of the poems for which Owen is now chiefly remembered were written in a creative burst between August 1917 and September 1918. His self-appointed task was to speak for the men in his care, to show the ‘Pity of War’, and, in a preface he wrote shortly before his death, he explains that ‘the pity is in the poetry’.

  Wilfred Owen, 1916

  Wilfred Owen with Artists’ Rifles Group, November 1915

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  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

  THE END

  Siegfried Sassoon, (1886-1967) — poet, author and soldier, decorated for bravery on the Western Front. His influence on Owen’s work was profound, shaping the style and d
irection of his poetry.

  The first edition of the collection

  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: —

  “Courage was mine, and I had mystery;

  Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery.”

  Siegfried Sassoon.

  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,

  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.

  Yet these elegies are not to this generation,

  This is in no sense consolatory.

  They may be to the next.

  All the poet can do to-day is to warn.

  That is why the true Poets must be truthful.

  If I thought the letter of this book would last,

  I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives

  Prussia, — my ambition and those names will be content; for they will

  have achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders.

  Note. — This Preface was found, in an unfinished condition,

  among Wilfred Owen’s papers.

  Strange Meeting

  It seemed that out of the 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;

  With a thousand fears 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 the 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 has 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 . . .”

  (This poem was found among the author’s papers.

  It ends on this strange note.)

  *Another Version*

  Earth’s wheels run oiled with blood. Forget we that.

  Let us lie down and dig ourselves in thought.

  Beauty is yours and you have mastery,

  Wisdom is mine, and I have mystery.

  We two will stay behind and keep our troth.

  Let us forego men’s minds that are brute’s natures,

  Let us not sup the blood which some say nurtures,

  Be we not swift with swiftness of the tigress.

  Let us break ranks from those who trek from progress.

  Miss we the march of this retreating world

  Into old citadels that are not walled.

  Let us lie out and hold the open truth.

  Then when their blood hath clogged the chariot wheels

  We will go up and wash them from deep wells.

  What though we sink from men as pitchers falling

  Many shall raise us up to be their filling

  Even from wells we sunk too deep for war

  And filled by brows that bled where no wounds were.

  *Alternative line — *

  Even as One who bled where no wounds were.

  Greater Love

  Red lips are not so red

  As the stained stones kissed by the English de
ad.

  Kindness of wooed and wooer

  Seems shame to their love pure.

  O Love, your eyes lose lure

  When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

  Your slender attitude

  Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,

  Rolling and rolling there

  Where God seems not to care;

  Till the fierce Love they bear

  Cramps them in death’s extreme decrepitude.

  Your voice sings not so soft, —

  Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft, —

  Your dear voice is not dear,

  Gentle, and evening clear,

  As theirs whom none now hear

  Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

  Heart, you were never hot,

  Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;

  And though your hand be pale,

  Paler are all which trail

  Your cross through flame and hail:

  Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.

  Apologia pro Poemate Meo

  I, too, saw God through mud —

  The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.

  War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,

  And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

  Merry it was to laugh there —

  Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.

  For power was on us as we slashed bones bare

  Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.

  I, too, have dropped off fear —

  Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,

  And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear

  Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;