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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?

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
Sleep
Break
Fatuous
Earth
Sunbeams
Made
Futility
Clay
Toil
Tall
Grew

More quotes by Wilfred Owen

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Happy are men who yet before they are killed Can let their veins run cold.
Wilfred Owen
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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.
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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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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What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
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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Soldiers may grow a soul when turned to fronds, But here the thing's best left at home with friends.
Wilfred Owen
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Those who, like the beasts, have no such Hope, pass their old age shrouded with an inward gloom.
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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All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.
Wilfred Owen
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Be bullied, be outraged, by killed, but do not kill.
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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All I ask is to be held above the barren wastes of want.
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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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.
Wilfred Owen
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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.
Wilfred Owen
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Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.
Wilfred Owen
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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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Whatever mourns when many leave these shores: Whatever shares The eternal reciprocity of tears.
Wilfred Owen
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All a poet can do today is warn.
Wilfred Owen