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Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.

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
Stones
Dead
Stained
Kissed
Red
Lips
English

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I was a boy when I first realized that the fullest life liveable was a Poet's
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Was it for this the clay grew tall? O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?
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And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
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The universal pervasion of ugliness, hideous landscapes, vile noises, foul language...everything. Unnatural, broken, blasted the distortion of the dead, whose unburiable bodies sit outside the dug outs all day, all night, the most execrable sights on earth. In poetry we call them the most glorious.
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For by my glee might many men have laughed, And of my weeping may something have been left, Which must die now.
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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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I am only conscious of any satisfaction in Scientific Reading or thinking when it rounds off into a poetical generality and vagueness.
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My friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory. The old lie: It is sweet and fitting that you should die for your country.
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All a poet can do today is warn.
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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.
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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.
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Whatever mourns when many leave these shores: Whatever shares The eternal reciprocity of tears.
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I thought of all that worked dark pits Of war, and died Digging the rock where Death reputes Peace lies indeed.
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Dead men may envy living mites in cheese, Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys, And subdivide, and never come to death.
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Numbers of the old people cannot read. Those who can seldom do
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I, too, saw God through mud
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Happy are men who yet before they are killed Can let their veins run cold.
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The marvel is that we did not all die of cold. As a matter of fact, only one of my party actually froze to death before he could be got back, but I am not able to tell how many have ended up in hospital. We were marooned in a frozen desert. There was not a sign of life on the horizon and a thousand signs of death.
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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.
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So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
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