The Great War Poets, especially Wilfred Owen, always fascinate me. Poem selected and commented on by Jenny Bagger Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,Īnd each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes What candles may be held to speed them all? The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells Īnd bugles calling for them from sad shires. Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-– No mockeries now for them no prayers nor bells There are two extended images woven through the poem, one of war and weapons, as in ‘stuttering rifles’ and ‘wailing shells’, and the other is the religious imagery - church services and bells - to represent the death of the young men and the girls at home, who mourn them.What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? The tone is solemn and elegaic, that is praising a person or persons who have died. The voice is that of a third person narrator, we can assume the poet. This, the traditional pattern for sonnets, has an elegant, dignified beat appropriate to the sad subject.įor more on sonnets, their structure, composition and history, see Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116.
The metrical rhythm is iambic pentameter, that is five metrical feet per line, with each foot or ‘iamb’ comprising one unstressed and one stressed syllable. The first two quatrains have a rhyming pattern ABAB, but in the third quatrain this changes, so the overall pattern is ABAB CDCD EFFE GG. The poem is structured like a sonnet, that is four quatrains with a rhyming couplet to finish, making fourteen lines. Owen chose the sonnet structure for this poem, no doubt because, traditionally, the form has been used for serious and solemn subjects - death, religious themes, deep love.
Owen’s “Anthem” implicitly contrasts with the patriotic songs sung by those caught up in the nationalist fervour of the war. However, an anthem can also be a choral song or religious chant. The one most pertinent to this poem is an unusually rousing popular song that typifies or is identified with a particular subculture, movement, or point of view. Many were poorly equipped and suffered severe combat trauma. As often in war, WWI soldiers typically fought without knowing the real political reasons behind the conflict, and suffered terrible experiences that civilians could not grasp. This classic WWI poem concerns the death of soldiers and the notification their families receive when they die.
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