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After all my years of playing soldiers, and then of reading History, I have almost a mania to be in the East, to see fighting, and to serve.

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
Almost
Reading
Mania
Fighting
Aunt
History
Soldiers
Years
Soldier
Serve
East
Playing

More quotes by Wilfred Owen

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As bronze may be much beautified by lying in the dark damp soil, so men who fade in dust of warfare fade fairer, and sorrow blooms their soul.
Wilfred Owen
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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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The war affects me less than it ought. But I can do no service to anybody by agitating for news or making dole over the slaughter.
Wilfred Owen
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All the poet can do today is warn. That is why true Poets must be truthful.
Wilfred Owen
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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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Heart, you were never hot Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot
Wilfred Owen
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All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.
Wilfred Owen
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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.
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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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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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.
Wilfred Owen
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Numbers of the old people cannot read. Those who can seldom do
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 I ask is to be held above the barren wastes of want.
Wilfred Owen
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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.
Wilfred Owen
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Was it for this the clay grew tall?
Wilfred Owen
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I was a boy when I first realized that the fullest life liveable was a Poet's
Wilfred Owen
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When I begin to eliminate from the list all those professions which are impossible from a financial point of view and then those which I feel disinclined to-it leaves nothing
Wilfred Owen
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I have perceived much beauty In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight Heard music in the silentness of duty Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.
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