Wilfred Owen
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"Wilfred Edward Salter Owen" Military Cross/MC was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the World War I/First World War. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of Trench warfare/trenches and Poison gas in World War I/gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend and mentor Siegfried Sassoon, and stood in stark contrast both to the public perception of war at the time and to the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Among his best-known works – most of which were published posthumously – are "Dulce et Decorum est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility (poem)/Futility" and "Strange Meeting (poem)/Strange Meeting".

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Shall Life renew these bodies? Of a truthAll death will he annul, all tears assuage?Or fill these void veins full again with youthAnd wash with an immortal water age?

Move him into the sun —Gently its touch awoke him once,At home, whispering of fields unsown.Always it woke him, even in France,Until this morning and this snow.

Red lips are not so red/ As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

My arms have mutinied against me — brutes!My fingers fidget like ten idle brats,My back's been stiff for hours, damned hours.Death never gives his squad a Stand-at-ease.

A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,May creep back, silent, to still village wellsUp half-known roads.

Behold,A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.But the old man would not so, but slew his son...

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;/ Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,/ And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the truest poets must be truthful.