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Anthem for Doomed Youth is one of the best-known and most popular of Wilfred Owen's poems. It employs the traditional form of an Italian sonnet, but it uses the rhyme scheme of an English sonnet (also used by Shakespeare). Much of the imagery suggests Christian funeral rituals and the poem moves from infernal noise to mournful silence.
It was written in 1917, when Owen was a patient at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, recovering from shell shock. The poem itself is a lament for young soldiers whose lives were unnecessarily lost in World War I. At the hospital, Owen met and became close friends with another poet, Siegfried Sassoon, and asked for his assistance in polishing his rough drafts. It was Sassoon who named it 'Anthem', and who substituted 'Doomed' for 'Dead'; the famous epithet of "patient minds" is also a correction of his. The amended manuscript copy, in both men's handwriting, still exists, and may be found at the Wilfred Owen Manuscript Archive online.
- What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
- Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
- Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
- Can patter out their hasty orisons.
- No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
- Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
- The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
- And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
- What candles may be held to speed them all?
- Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
- Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
- 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.
Later cultural references
Pat Barker in her novel Regeneration (1991) recreates the encounter of Owen and Sassoon and makes the work on the poem, and Sassoon's suggestions, part of the story.
External links
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 25 November 2008, at 06:41.
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