Poetry of Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier, regarded by many as one of the leading poets of the First World War.  His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trench and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and sat in stark contrast to both the public perception of war at the time, and to the confidently patriotic verse written earlier by war poets such as Rupert Brooke.  Some of his best-known works—most of which were published posthumously—include Dulce et Decorum Est, Insensibility, Anthem for Doomed Youth, Futility and Strange Meeting.

Wilfred Owen was killed in action at the Battle of the Sambre just a week before the war ended, causing news of his death to reach home as the town’s church bells declared peace.

(edited from the Wikipedia article on Wilfred Owen)

Over the past few years, I have come to find great admiration for the poetry of Wilfred Owen.  In my every day life and in the writing of this blog I find myself thinking of his poems.  As the above mini-bio indicates, Owen is chiefly remembered for his poetry about war, and indeed those poems move me as deeply as a person who has never experienced war can be moved.  Those poems are, I believe, vital in that they counter the popular, glamorous (though less so now than in the past) image of war with a stark and horrifying image founded on honesty.

Despite its relevance to our current times, it is not Owen’s collection of war poems that I think of on an almost daily basis, but his smaller in number (and more often neglected) poems about boys!  I suppose I am in no position to make statements about Owen’s sexuality, but it seems to me that he had an admiration for boys and their beauty that is very much in line with my own.  I am hardly the first person to suggest that he was a pedophile, and if I may be so bold I would say that his poetry about boys is not neglected for its immaturity or weakness (it is often dismissed as such in scholarly works) but because it inspires uncomfortable questions that cannot be answered.  (Owen’s mother burned a bag of his personal papers after his death at his request, and his brother removed “discreditable” lines from his letters and diaries.)

I have collected here a number of Owen’s poems dealing with boys, along with some small commentary, so that you may decide for yourself if this is the poetry of a man who loves boys, or sees them merely through artistic eyes.

Sonnet
To a Child

Sweet is your antique body, not yet young.
Beauty withheld from youth that looks for youth.
Fair only for your father. Dear among
Masters in art. To all men else uncouth
Save me; who knows your smile comes very old,
Learnt of the happy dead that laughed with gods;
For earlier suns than ours have lent you gold,
Sly fauns and trees have given you jigs and nods.

But soon your heart, hot-beating like a bird’s,
Shall slow down. Youth shall lop your hair,
And you must learn wry meanings in our words.
Your smile shall dull, because too keen aware;
And when for hopes your hand shall be uncurled,
Your eyes shall close, being opened to the world.

WHO IS THE GOD OF CANONGATE?

Who is the god of Canongate?
I, for I trifle with men and fate.

Art thou high in the heart of London?
Yea, for I do what is done and undone.

What is thy throne, thou barefoot god?
All pavements where my feet have trod.

Where is thy shrine, then, little god?
Up secret stairs men mount unshod.

Say what libation such men fill?
There lift their lusts and let them spill.

Why do you smell of the moss in Arden?
If I told you, Sir, your look would harden.

What are you called, I ask your pardon?
I am called the Flower of Covent Garden.

What shall I pay for you, lily-lad?
Not all the gold King Solomon had.

How can I buy you, London Flower?
Buy me for ever, but not for an hour.

When shall I pay you, Violet Eyes?
With laughter first, and after with sighs.

But you will fade, my delicate bud?
No, there is too much sap in my blood.

Will you not shrink in my shut room?
No, there I’ll break into fullest bloom.

IMPROMPTU
Now, let me feel the feeling of thy hand –
For it is softer than the breast of girls,
And warmer than the pillows of their cheeks,
And richer than the fullness of their eyes,
And stronger than the ardour of their hearts.

Its shape is subtler than a dancer’s limbs;
Its skin is coloured like the twilight Alp;
And odoured like the pale, night-scented flowers,
And fresh with early love, as earth with dawn.

Yield me thy hand a little while, fair love;
That I may feel it; and so feel thy life,
And kiss across it, as the sea the sand,
And love it, with the love of Sun for Earth.

Ah! let me look a long while in thine eyes,
For they are deeper than the depths of thought,
And clearer than the ether after rain,
And suaver than the moving of the moon,
And vaster than the void of all desire.

Child, let me fully see and know thy eyes!
Their fire is like the wrath of shaken rubies;
Their shade is like the peaceful forest-heart.

They hold me as the great star holds the less.
I see them as the lights beyond this life.
They reach me by a sense not found in man,
And bless me with a bliss unguessed of God.