The Poetry of Wilfred Owen - Julia Allen

  I wrote my whole paper on this, but I can't get over how incredibly vivid Owen's depiction of war is and how perfectly it encapsulates sublimity. I could read every single one of his poems a hundred times over, and I would never be tired of it. Every time I read I feel the weight and truth of his words, time never lightens those feelings. I truly feel that his works are the perfect example of the sublime. The imagery of war is so intense but the reader cannot stop reading, they cannot look away. My favorite of his will always be "Strange Meeting". The poet being forced to recognize the humanity of his enemy is amazing. He spends his descent into hell after his death learning about this stranger's sorrow over his own short life, only for the stranger to reveal he was killed by the poet the day before. There is always a human being on the other side of the war, and I feel like this really shows us the dangers of the 'us versus them' rhetoric. I'll put the whole poem here:

Strange Meeting

BY WILFRED OWEN

It seemed that out of battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,

Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,— 

By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;

Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,

And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.

“Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.” 

“None,” said that other, “save the undone years,

The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,

Was my life also; I went hunting wild

After the wildest beauty in the world,

Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,

But mocks the steady running of the hour,

And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.

For by my glee might many men have laughed,

And of my weeping something had been left,

Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,

The pity of war, the pity war distilled.

Now men will go content with what we spoiled.

Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.

They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress. 

None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.

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.

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.

Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

“I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

Let us sleep now. . . .”