Wilfred Owen - Tumblr Posts

Day 11 of my favourite Avatar polls, each poll will run for 1 week and will release daily in alphabetical order of entities.

Please repost for larger sample size.

“P.S. My Mother’s address is Mahim Monkmoor Rd. Shrewsbury. I know you would try to see her, if – I failed to see her again.”

— from Wilfred Owen’s letter to Siegfried Sassoon (22 September 1918)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!---An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen

There was a whispering in my hearth, A sigh of the coal, Grown wistful of a former earth It might recall. I listened for a tale of leaves And smothered ferns, Frond-forests, and the low sly lives Before the fauns. My fire might show steam-phantoms simmer From Time’s old cauldron, Before the birds made nests in summer, Or men had children. But the coals were murmuring of their mine, And moans down there Of boys that slept wry sleep, and men Writhing for air. – Excerpt from the poem “Miners” by Wilfred Owen.