(1893-1918 / Shropshire / England)

poet Wilfred Owen
#39 on top 500 poets

Quotations

  • ''We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.''
    Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), British poet. Exposure (l. 12). . . Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, The. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair, eds. (2d ed., 1988) W. W. Norton & Company.
    251 person liked.
    		160 person did not like.
  • ''A mead
    Bordered about with warbling water brooks.
    A maid
    Laughing the love-laugh with me; proud of looks.''
    Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), British poet. From My Diary, July 1914 (l. 17-20). . . Faber Book of Modern Verse, The. Michael Roberts, ed. (4th ed. revised by Peter Porter, 1982) Faber and Faber.
    181 person liked.
    		165 person did not like.
  • ''Bees
    Shaking the heavy dews from bloom and frond.
    Boys
    Bursting the surface of the ebony pond.''
    Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), British poet. From My Diary, July 1914 (l. 9-12). . . Faber Book of Modern Verse, The. Michael Roberts, ed. (4th ed. revised by Peter Porter, 1982) Faber and Faber.
    164 person liked.
    		138 person did not like.
  • ''Was it for this the clay grew tall?
    MO what made fatuous sunbeams toil
    To break earth's sleep at all?''
    Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), British poet. Futility (l. 12-14). . . Oxford Book of War Poetry, The. Jon Stallworthy, ed. (1984) Oxford University Press.
    157 person liked.
    		137 person did not like.
  • ''Move him into the sun—
    Gently its touch awoke him once,
    At home, whispering of fields half-sown.''
    Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), British poet. Futility (l. 1-3). . . Oxford Book of War Poetry, The. Jon Stallworthy, ed. (1984) Oxford University Press.
    24 person liked.
    		12 person did not like.
  • ''Heart, you were never hot
    Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;''
    Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), British poet. Greater Love (l. 19-20). . . Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, The. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair, eds. (2d ed., 1988) W. W. Norton & Company.
    24 person liked.
    		8 person did not like.
  • ''Red lips are not so red As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.''
    Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), British poet. "Greater Love," (l. 1-2) (written 1917), publ. In The Poems of Wilfred Owen, ed. Edmund Blunden (1931). Opening lines.
    36 person liked.
    		7 person did not like.
  • ''Your slender attitude
    Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,''
    Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), British poet. Greater Love (l. 7-8). . . Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, The. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair, eds. (2d ed., 1988) W. W. Norton & Company.
    23 person liked.
    		10 person did not like.
  • ''Happy are men who yet before they are killed
    Can let their veins run cold.''
    Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), British poet. Insensibility (l. 1-2). . . Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse, The. Philip Larkin, ed. (1973) Oxford University Press.
    27 person liked.
    		7 person did not like.
  • ''By choice they made themselves immune
    To pity and whatever moans in man
    Before the last sea and the hapless stars;
    Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;
    Whatever shares
    The eternal reciprocity of tears.''
    Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), British poet. Insensibility (l. 54-59). . . Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse, The. Philip Larkin, ed. (1973) Oxford University Press.
    24 person liked.
    		12 person did not like.

Read more quotations »

Preface

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,
dominion or power,
except War.
Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.
The subject of it is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are not to this generation,
This is in no sense consolatory.

Read more »
[Hata Bildir]