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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.

Wilfred Owen

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Wilfred Owen
Age: 25 †
Born: 1893
Born: March 18
Died: 1918
Died: November 4
Poet
Writer
Oswestry
Shropshire
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
Owen
Mines
Mine
Walled
Missing
Citadels
Mystery
Retreating
Courage
Mastery
Wisdom
March
World
Vain
Miss

More quotes by Wilfred Owen

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The old Lie:Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
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I, too, saw God through mud
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Children are not meant to be studied, but enjoyed. Only by studying to be pleased do we understand them.
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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.
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The centuries will burn rich loads With which we groaned, Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids, While songs are crooned: But they will not dream of us poor lads, Left in the ground.
Wilfred Owen
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Was it for this the clay grew tall?
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Be bullied, be outraged, by killed, but do not kill.
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And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan. And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hid Its bruises in the earth, but crawled no further, Showed me its feet, the feet of many men, And the fresh-severed head of it, my head.
Wilfred Owen
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I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense conciliatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
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The old happiness is unreturning. Boy's griefs are not so grievous as youth's yearning. Boys have no sadness sadder than our hope.
Wilfred Owen
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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.
Wilfred Owen
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I find purer philosophy in a Poem than in a Conclusion of Geometry, a chemical analysis, or a physical law
Wilfred Owen
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All a poet can do today is warn.
Wilfred Owen
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All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.
Wilfred Owen
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If I have to be a soldier I must be a good one, anything else is unthinkable
Wilfred Owen
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And some cease feeling Even themselves or for themselves. Dullness best solves The tease and doubt of shelling
Wilfred Owen
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A Poem does not grow by jerks. As trees in Spring produce a new ring of tissue, so does every poet put forth a fresh outlay of stuff at the same season.
Wilfred Owen
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My subject is war, and the pity of war.
Wilfred Owen
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No-man's land under snow is like the face of the moon: chaotic, crater ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of madness.
Wilfred Owen
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Do you know what would hold me together on a battlefield? The sense that I was perpetuating the language in which Keats and the rest of them wrote!
Wilfred Owen