Poetry, Wilfred Owen [polar express read aloud TXT] 📗

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Of them who running on that last high place
Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up
On the hot blast and fury of hell’s upsurge,
Or plunged and fell away past this world’s verge,
Some say God caught them even before they fell.

But what say such as from existence’ brink
Ventured but drave too swift to sink.
The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,
And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames
With superhuman inhumanities,
Long-famous glories, immemorial shames⁠—
And crawling slowly back, have by degrees
Regained cool peaceful air in wonder⁠—
Why speak they not of comrades that went under?

Smile, Smile, Smile

Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned
Yesterday’s Mail; the casualties (typed small)
And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.
Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned;
For, said the paper, “When this war is done
The men’s first instinct will be making homes.
Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes,
It being certain war has just begun.
Peace would do wrong to our undying dead⁠—
The sons we offered might regret they died
If we got nothing lasting in their stead.
We must be solidly indemnified.
Though all be worthy Victory which all bought,
We rulers sitting in this ancient spot
Would wrong our very selves if we forgot
The greatest glory will be theirs who fought,
Who kept this nation in integrity.”
Nation?⁠—The half-limbed readers did not chafe
But smiled at one another curiously
Like secret men who know their secret safe.
This is the thing they know and never speak,
That England one by one had fled to France
(Not many elsewhere now save under France).
Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week,
And people in whose voice real feeling rings
Say: How they smile! They’re happy now, poor things.

23rd September 1918.

Endnotes

This Preface was found, in an unfinished condition, among Wilfred Owen’s papers. ↩

This poem was found among the author’s papers. It ends on this strange note. ↩

Alternative line: “Even as One who bled where no wounds were.” ↩

Colophon

Poetry
was published in 1920 by
Wilfred Owen.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Robin Whittleton,
and is based on a transcription produced in 1997 by
Alan R. Light, Gary M. Johnson, and David Widger
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
HathiTrust Digital Library.

The cover page is adapted from
The Ypres Salient at Night,
a painting completed in 1918 by
Paul Nash.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
May 14, 2018, 4:20 a.m.
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