Wilfred Owen
Source :
A Terre (being the
philosophy of many soldiers)
Sit on the bed. I'm blind, and three
parts shell.
Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall.
Both arms have mutinied against me,-brutes.
My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.
I tried to peg out soldierly,-no use!
One dies of war like any old disease.
This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.
I have my medals?-Discs to make eyes close.
My glorious ribbons?-Ripped from my own back
In scarlet shreds. (That's for your poetry book.)
A short life and a merry one, my buck!
We used to say we'd hate to live dead-old,-
Yet now...I'd willingly be puffy, bald,
And patriotic. Buffers catch from boys
At least the jokes hurled at them. I suppose
Little I'd ever teach a son, but hitting,
Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting.
Well, that's what I learnt,-that, and making money.
Your fifty years ahead seem none too
many?
Tell me how long I've got? God! For one year
To help myself to nothing more than air!
One Spring! Is one too good to spare, too long?
Spring wind would work its own way to my lung,
And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots.
My servant's lamed, but listen how he
shouts!
When I'm lugged out, he'll still be good for that.
Here in this mummy-case, you know, I've thought
How well I might have swept his floors for ever.
I'd ask no nights off when the bustle's over,
Enjoying so the dirt. Who's prejudiced
Against a grimed hand when his own's quite dust,
Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn,
Less warm than dust that mixes with arms' tan?
I'd love to be a sweep, now, black as Town,
Yes, or a muckman. Must I be his load?
O Life, Life, let me breathe,-a dug-out
rat!
Not worse than ours the lives rats lead-
Nosing along at night down some safe rut,
They find a shell-proof home before they rot.
Dead men may envy living mites in cheese,
Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys,
And subdivide, and never come to death.
Certainly flowers have the easiest time on earth.
'I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone'
Shelley would tell me. Shelley would be stunned:
The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now.
'Pushing up daisies' is their creed, you know.
To grain, then, go my fat, to buds my
sap,
For all the usefulness there is in soap.
D'you think the Boche will ever stew man-soup?
Some day, no doubt, if...Friend, be very sure
I shall be better off with plants that share
More peaceably the meadow and the shower.
Soft rains will touch me,-as they could touch once,
And nothing but the sun shall make me ware.
Your guns may crash around me. I'll not hear;
Or, if I wince, I shall not know I wince.
Don't take my soul's poor comfort for
your jest.
Soldiers may grow a soul when turned to fronds,
But here's the thing's best left at home with friends.
My soul's a little grief, grappling
your chest,
To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased
On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds.
Carry my crying spirit till it's weaned
To do without what blood remained these wounds
War broke: and now the Winter of the
world
With perishing great darkness closes in.
The foul tornado, centred at
Is over all the width of
Rending the sails of progress. Rent or furled
Are all Art's ensigns. Verse wails. Now begin
Famines of thought and feeling. Love's wine's thin.
The grain of human Autumn rots, down-hurled.
For after Spring had bloomed in early
And Summer blazed her glory out with
An Autumn softly fell, a harvest home,
A slow grand age, and rich with all increase.
But now, for us, wild Winter, and the need
Of sowings for new Spring, and blood for seed
Source: http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/jtap/warpoems.htm
THE
DAMAGES CAUSED BY WAR
As
we can observe, this paper will deal with War, to be precise, with the First
World War, which took place from 1914 to 1918 (Wikipedia1). To talk
about what the harms of War are and thus, their consequences reflected in human
beings we are going to analyse and concentrate on two moving and exciting
poems. Both of them are written by Wilfred Owen, a realistic poet and a soldier
as well, who died only a week before the end of the War (Wikipedia2).
The poems are “
To
begin with, in “
To focus on the vast majority of war´s victims, the
soldiers, “A Terre (being the philosophy of many soldiers)”, shows a soldier’s
anxiety and agony because he is dying and he does not want to die so young, in
fact, he would like to live until he were an elderly man.
This soldier is blind and much damaged because of a
bombing, and he is talking to a second person, “That’s for your poetry book”
(line10); “we used to say we’d hate to live dead-old” (line 12). He also
mentions that he has a servant (“my servant…” line 25), so it is supposed that
he is an important or a rich person. He says that everybody dies easily in War
and wherever you go, you see injured people and bandages (line 7). Furthermore,
he asks if he has medals, which were usually given to dead people, as if these
medals were those coins that ancient cultures put on eyes closed to pay the
journey to the death world, Caronte´s boat.
Moreover,
in the fourth stanza he begs God for letting him live only one more year, one
spring (lines 20 – 21 - 22). As well as he asks life to let him breathe (line
36). Such desperation he feels that he is envying life itself, and imagines
himself being a part of nature, maybe a microbe, herb, a stone or a plant. And
then he will not suffer from Wars, because he will not hear all guns and will
not notice the cruelty of War.
As
far as the vocabulary is concerned, Wilfred Owen uses strong and deep
expressions. For example, in “A Terre” we can find “I’m blind and, tree parts
shell” (line 1); “one dies at war like any old disease” (line 6); “O Life,
Life, let me breathe” (line 36); “My soul’s little grief” (line 61). And in “
Personally,
I have been really moved by these two poems and also, by the rest of Owen´s
poems that I read. In my opinion, everything that surrounds a War is bad and
negative; in fact, very few people earn with War, actually, the vast majority
lose. In general, town and cities become poor because of the lack of money and
food. People lose their families and most of the soldiers lose some parts of
their bodies or die alone in the middle of the battle.
I
think that both poems show the harshness of War and its uselessness. Owen has preferred to concentrate many of
his poems on these two ideas, because, he as a soldier was obliged to kill
other innocent people and he felt the fear of being in trenches. However, the
thing that has impressed me and I admire is that he makes no difference in
people. That is, for him, an English man’s death was as important as a French
man’s death. He was concerned with all people who were damaged and even dead,
because they were only victims of war.
At
the end, War changes everything, many families are separated, the men have to
fight and can die, everything is destroyed; cities, cultivation, families and
people turned more violent and those who took care for the others are usually
killed. Finally, to survive a War, people have to learn to be cruel and cold.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
v
1.
Wikipedia, “World War I – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”, this page was last modified 23:11, 26 March 2006; 28
March 2006 (I consulted it),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World_War
v
2. Wikipedia, “Wilfred Owen – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”,
this page was last modified 23:11, 26 March 2006; 28 March 2006 (I consulted
it), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Owen
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Reading module 07: Wilfred Owen |
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Academic year 2006 (May 2006)
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Ana Mª Pardillos Murillo
Universitat de València Press
mailto:aparmu@alumni.uv.es