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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.

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
Children
Glory
Would
Sweet
Friend
High
Dies
Zest
Lying
Ardent
Tell
Fitting
Country
Desperate

More quotes by 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
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I tried to peg out soldierly,--no use! One dies of war like any old disease.
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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Happy are men who yet before they are killed Can let their veins run cold.
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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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.
Wilfred Owen
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I, too, saw God through mud - The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled. War brought more glory to their eyes than blood, And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.
Wilfred Owen
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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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Whatever mourns when many leave these shores: Whatever shares The eternal reciprocity of tears.
Wilfred Owen
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All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.
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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Dead men may envy living mites in cheese, Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys, And subdivide, and never come to death.
Wilfred Owen
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Never fear: Thank Home, and Poetry, and the Force behind both.
Wilfred Owen
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Flying is the only active profession I could ever continue with enthusiasm after the War.
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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What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
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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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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Children are not meant to be studied, but enjoyed. Only by studying to be pleased do we understand them.
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