Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen &
Wilfred Owen
This is a poem written from the point of view of an injured soldier emerging from unconsciousness into confused half-awareness. It begins in the third person ‘he’, but then adopts the soldier’s own voice; effectively a bewildered stream of consciousness. Owen imagines the questions that, in his semi...
His fingers wake, and flutter up the bed.
His eyes come open with a pull of will,
Helped by the yellow may-flowers by his head.
A blind-cord drawls across the window-sill . . .
How smooth the floor of the ward is! what a rug!
And who's that talking, somewhere out of sight?
Why are they laughing? What's inside that jug?
"Nurse! Doctor!" "Yes; all right, all right."
But sudden dusk bewilders all the air—
There seems no time to want a drink of water.
Nurse looks so far away. And everywhere
Music and roses burst through crimson slaughter.
He can’t remember where he saw blue sky.
Cold; cold; he's cold; and yet so hot:
And there's no light to see the voices by—
No time to dream, and ask—he knows not what.