Quote

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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Wilfred Owen
Age: 25 †
Born: 1893
Born: March 18
Died: 1918
Died: November 4
Poet
Writer
Oswestry
Shropshire
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
Owen
War
Wash
Spirit
Wheels
Wells
Truths
Clogged
Without
Wounds
Stint
Even
Sweet
Taint
Much
Deep
Chariot
Would
Blood
Chariots
Lying
Poured

More quotes by Wilfred Owen

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The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
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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.
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Those who, like the beasts, have no such Hope, pass their old age shrouded with an inward gloom.
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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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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 I ask is to be held above the barren wastes of want.
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Happy are men who yet before they are killed Can let their veins run cold.
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The English say, Yours Truly, and mean it. The Italians say, I kiss your feet, and mean, I kick your head.
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What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
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All the poet can do today is warn. That is why true Poets must be truthful.
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Soldiers may grow a soul when turned to fronds, But here the thing's best left at home with friends.
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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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Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.
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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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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.
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It seemed that out of battle I escaped Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
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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!
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The Young Soldier It is not death Without hereafter To one in dearth Of life and its laughter, Nor the sweet murder Dealt slow and even Unto the martyr Smiling at heaven: It is the smile Faint as a (waning) myth, Faint, and exceeding small On a boy's murdered mouth.
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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