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User Rating: |
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6.8
/10
(25
votes)
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Under his helmet, up against his pack,
After so many days of work and waking,
Sleep took him by the brow and laid him back.
There, in the happy no-time of his sleeping,
Death took him by the heart. There heaved a quaking
Of the aborted life within him leaping,
Then chest and sleepy arms once more fell slack.
And soon the slow, stray blood came creeping
From the intruding lead, like ants on track.
Whether his deeper sleep lie shaded by the shaking
Of great wings, and the thoughts that hung the stars,
High-pillowed on calm pillows of God's making,
Above these clouds, these rains, these sleets of lead,
And these winds' scimitars,
-Or whether yet his thin and sodden head
Confuses more and more with the low mould,
His hair being one with the grey grass
Of finished fields, and wire-scrags rusty-old,
Who knows? Who hopes? Who troubles? Let it pass!
He sleeps. He sleeps less tremulous, less cold,
Than we who wake, and waking say Alas!
Wilfred Owen
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Read poems about / on: sleep, work, happy, hair, death, god, time, heart, life, rain, wind, star, hope
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Comments about this poem (Asleep
by
Wilfred Owen
) |
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comments about this poem (Asleep by
Wilfred Owen
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Michael Harmon
(9/9/2009 1:17:00 PM) |
Wilfred Owen, along with Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke, is one of the great poetic chroniclers of WW1. His work (e.g. with slant rhymes, etc) was innovative, and worthy of study today. His death, and Keats', at a tragically early age, I consider to be among the greatest losses English poetry has ever suffered.
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Kevin Straw
(9/9/2009 5:43:00 AM) |
I am not sure how the blood coming from the soldier's wound is like 'ants on track'. Could the last section have been tightened up a little? It seems a bit foggy at times.
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Cler Abeli
(3/31/2009 4:56:00 AM) |
this is such a beutifull poem, im studying wilfred owens poems at school and this is just great
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Adriana Veloso
(1/11/2009 8:00:00 AM) |
I LOVE THIS ONE.....
SOMETIMES I JUST WANT FALL ASLEEP FOREVER! ! ! !
i really love it
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Janet Hedger
(9/9/2008 6:41:00 AM) |
As a poet myself and one who writes poems of conflict through my involvement with Forces poetry - I admire and respect Wilfred Owen. So glad this poem is on site today - as it is one of my favourite pieces of his work - One can feel the life, shortened brutally by conflict, ebbing away with Owens words, into permanent sleep.
Jan
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Michael Speakman
(9/9/2007 8:34:00 AM) |
This is a beautiful poem and so sad i want to hurl my computer through the window.
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Wilfred Owen
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