War Poetry by Wilfred Owen Trivia Quiz

Answer: warn

Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 in Shropshire. He worked in the parish and later taught English in Bordeaux. When the war began, Owen volunteered to fight. He was injured in 1917 and spent some time in the hospital, where he met Siegfried Sassoon (who would later publish his poems).

In the summer of 1918 he returned to the front (again, voluntarily) and fell on November 4, 1918, aged 25, just a few days before Armistice. The quote I asked you to complete was used by composer Benjamin Britten as a sort of heading for his "War Requiem". Britten also included seven of Owen's poems. Take my quiz about the Requiem to find out more about it :)

Answer: Soldier's Dream

"And there were no more bombs, of ours or theirs / Not even an old flint-lock, not even a pikel / But God was vexed, and gave all power to Michael / And when I woke he'd seen to our repairs."

Answer: Identity Disk

From "With An Identity Disk".

Answer: Lie

The poem describes the progress of a weary, outworn group of soldiers ("Bent double, like old beggars under sacks...") which gets attacked and loses one of their own. Owen ends by addressing the reader, saying that if they had seen this, too, then no one would tell "the old Lie" any more: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori".

The Latin, originally a quote from Roman poet Horace's "Odes", translates as "It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country" and has become quite famous, especially in 19th century Europe.

Answer: whether the earth had better been left asleep forever

"Was it for this the clay grew tall? O what made fatuous sunbeams toil to break Earth's sleep at all?" The poet wonders, too, whether anything can wake the soldier up again, but concedes that only "the kind old sun will know".
This poem is one of my favorites. It is one of the seven poems Britten used in the "War Requiem".

Answer: The Kind Ghosts

"The Kind Ghosts" is a wonderful poem: full of atmosphere, and unusually conciliatory. It tells of a (nameless) woman who lives in a palace haunted by the ghosts of the fallen, but she is unaware of their presence. Those ghosts never show themselves and don't wander about - "Lest aught she be disturbed, or grieved at all."
This one, too, was used by Britten, but not in the "War Requiem". Britten included it in his "Nocturne".

Answer: Sonnet On Seeing A Piece Of Our Heavy Artillery Brought Into Action

Also included in the "War Requiem", but in adapted form. In the beginning, it reads like an enthusiastic killing frenzy, but the last lines revoke this impression: "But when thy spell be cast complete and whole / May God curse thee, and cut thee from our soul!"

Answer: The Parable of the Old Men and the Young

This poem tells of Abraham, and how he was told to sacrifice his own son. So he prepares everything and makes as to slay his son, when an angel appears and tells him to stop and offer a ram instead. So far so good. But in Owen's story, it all turns out differently: "But the old man would not so, and slew his son / And half the seed of Europe, one by one." Owen accuses the heads of state, who send the children of their own countries out to war and literally sacrifice them.
This poem was also included in the "War Requiem".

Answer: Jim

"(...No, damn your iodine. Jim? 'Ere! / Write my old girl, Jim, there's a dear.)"

Answer: "Let us sleep now..."

I've hardly ever read a more impressive poem. I'll put it here below this, so if I got anyone interested in it, you can go and read it here. "Strange Meeting" is the last of the seven poems in Britten's "War Requiem".
Thanks for playing, and now read "Strange Meeting" if you want to.

STRANGE MEETING
It seemed that out of battle I escaped
down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up and stared
with piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall -
by his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;
yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
and no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange friend," I said, "here is no cause to mourn."

"None," said the other, "save the undone years,
the hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
was my life also. I went hunting wild
after the wildest beauty in the world,
which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
but mocks the steady running of the hour,
and if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
and of my weeping something had been left,
which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
the pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
to miss the march of this retreating world
into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
but not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

"I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark, for so you frowned
yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now..."