Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) and his beloved Arthur Newboult, Edinburgh 1917.

 

SWEET IS YOUR ANTIQUE BODY

Sweet is you antique body, not yet young.
Beauty withheld from youth that looks for youth.
Fair only for your father. Dear among
Masters in art. To all men else uncouth
Save me; who knows your smile comes very old,
Learnt of the happy dead that laughed with gods;
For earlier suns than ours have lent you gold,
Sly fauns and trees have given you jigs and nods.

But soon your heart, hot-beating like a bird's,
Shall slow down. Youth shall lop your hair,
And you must learn wry meanings in our words.
Your smile shall dull, because too keen aware;
And when for hopes your hand shall be uncurled,
Your eyes shall close, being opened to the world.

Wilfred Owen

Introduction

Of the English poets killed in the futility of the First World War, Wilfred Owen has become the most admired. Of the so-called war poets, only Rosenberg equaled Owen's ability to transmute the experience of war into poetry. Owen was killed in action on November 4th, 1918, at twenty-five years of age, having published only four of his poems - all rather conventional in subject and style. Poems (1920) was published after Owen's death by his friend Siegfried Sasson, who had encouraged him to write more directly about his experience in the trenches while both were recovering from wounds in 1917. Owen's finest work was produced in the space of a year, during which he saw action almost daily. His last work, which includes "Dulce et Decorum Est," "Futility," and "Anthem for Doomed Youth," have effectively become national poems, taught in schools, colleges and universities.

Poems

About a boy prostitute:

WHO IS THE GOD OF CANONGATE ?

Who is the god of Canongate ?
- I, for I trifle with men and fate.

Art thou high in the heart of London ?
- Yea, for I do what is done and undone.

What is thou throne, thou barefoot god ?
- All pavements where my feet have trod.

Where is thy shrine then, little god ?
- Up secret stairs men mount unshod.

Say what libation such men fill ?
- They lift their lusts and let them spill.

Why do you smell of the moss in Arden ?
- If I told you, Sir, your look would harden.

What are you called, I ask your pardon ?
- I am the flower of Covent Garden.

What shall I pay for you, lily-lad ?
- Not all the gold King Solomon had.

How can I buy you, London flower ?
- Buy me for ever, not just for an hour.

When shall I pay you, Violet Eyes ?
- With laughter first, and after with sighs.

But you will fade, my delicate bud ?
- No, there is too much sap in my blood.

Will you not shrink in my shut room ?
- No, there I'll break into fullest bloom.

Wilfred Owen

---

Probably written after many long hours watching the de la Touche boys writing, while tutoring them. Several writers feel he probably fell in love with one of the boys. The other opinion is that it was written about Owen's thirteen year old boy-friend, Vivian Rampton [Hibberd, 1988 -- page 21]:

  IMPROMPTU

Now, let me feel the feeling of thy hand -
For it is softer than the breast of girls,
And warmer than the pillows of their cheeks,
And richer than the fullness of their eyes,
And stronger than the ardour of their hearts.
Its shape is subtler than a dancer's limbs;
Its skin is coloured like the twilight Alp;
And odoured like the pale, night-scented flowers,
And fresh as early love, as earth with dawn.
Yield me thy hand, a little while, fair love;
That I may feel it; and so feel thy life,
And kiss across it, as the sea the sand,
And love it, with the love of Sun for Earth.
Ah! let me look a long while in thine eyes,
For they are deeper than the depths of thought,
And clearer than the ether after rain,
And suaver than the moving of the moon,
And vaster than the void of all desire.

Child, let me fully see and know thy eyes!
Their fire is like the wrath of shaken rubies;
Their shade is like the peaceful forest-heart.
They hold me as the great star holds the less.
I see them as the lights beyond this life.
They reach me by a sense not found in man,
And bless me with a bliss unguessed of God.

Wilfred Owen

---

MAUNDY THURSDAY

Between the brown hands of a server-lad
The silver cross was offered to be kissed.
The men came up, lugubrious, but not sad,
And knelt reluctantly, half-prejudiced.
(And kissing, kissed the emblem of a creed.)
Then mourning women knelt; meek mouths they had,
(And kissed the Body of the Christ indeed.)
Young children came, with eager lips and glad.
(They kissed a silver doll, immensely bright.)
Then I, too, knelt before that acolyte.
Above the crucifix I bent my head:
The Christ was thin, and cold, and very dead:
And yet I bowed, yea, kissed - my lips did cling.
(I kissed the warm live hand that held the thing.)

Wilfred Owen

[ From Owen's letter of 27th December 1914: (the 'boys' he mentions are not Owen's sons - Owen never married) "We made two journeys to church with the bath chair, and installed both the boys and ourselves inside the very sanctuary. An interesting position for me, all mixed up with the candles, incense, acolytes, chasuble and such like... I think the efforts of the dear, darling little acolytes to keep awake was what took most of my attention there." ]

---

Owen was actively seeking young boys in public places, and finding them:

"... the telescope I luckily gave to Colin acted as a talisman, potent as the Arabian Magician's Ivory Rod. For by feigning to see strange things through it (as indeed I did if mist and the blackness-of-darkness-for-ever are strange) I gathered five gentle children around me..."

[ Wilfred Owen. From 'The Collected Letters of Wilfred Owen' ]

"Owen himself made an incautious mention of 'mon petit ami in Scarboro' in a letter to Gunston. He usually found a boy or two to befriend, wherever he was, probably more than the letters reveal. These relationships could be presented as innocent or romantic, depending on the company present."

[ Hibberd, Dominic. Wilfred Owen - The Last Year, 1917-1918. London. Constable, 1992 -- page 88 ]

"...the pleasure he derived from observing youthful beauty was disturbingly inconsistent with the attitudes he was [as a teacher at Dunsden] supposed to be inculcating. As the strain grew, his health suffered and terrors filled his dreams"

[ Hibberd, Dominic. Owen The Poet. London. Macmillan, 1986 -- page 14 ]

"He described several youths with incautious admiration in his letters..."

[ Hibberd, Dominic. Owen The Poet. London. Macmillan, 1986 -- page 43 ]

"Spring [for Owen] was the moment of growth, the season for 'putting forth' poetry (as leaves to a tree) and for walking in the woods with young companions - with Rampton in 1912, Henriette in 1914, the Merignac boy amid the surging foliage of 'his' woods in 1915. [...] Spring's power was both redemptive and sexual, its new beauty innocent and erotic, paralleling the 'crucial change from boy to man'."

[ Hibberd, Dominic. Owen The Poet. London. Macmillan, 1986 -- page 187 ]

[In Spring 1916...] "There were spring rambles again, this time with some Boy Scouts whose 'affection - which has come up swiftly as February flowers - seems without bounds and without resraint'..."

[ Hibberd, Dominic. Owen The Poet. London. Macmillan, 1986 -- page 60 ]

 

---

[ Main page ]