rs; he did not
pity himself. In the last year of his life he attained a clear vision
of what he needed to say, and these poems survive him as his true and
splendid testament.

Wilfred Owen was born at Oswestry on 18th March 1893. He was educated
at the Birkenhead Institute, and matriculated at London University in
1910. In 1913 he obtained a private tutorship near Bordeaux, where he
remained until 1915. During this period he became acquainted with the
eminent French poet, Laurent Tailhade, to whom he showed his early
verses, and from whom he received considerable encouragement. In 1915,
in spite of delicate health, he joined the Artists' Rifles O.T.C., was
gazetted to the Manchester Regiment, and served with their 2nd Battalion
in France from December 1916 to June 1917, when he was invalided home.
Fourteen months later he returned to the Western Front and served with
the same Battalion, ultimately commanding a Company.

He was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry while taking part in
some heavy fighting on 1st October. He was killed on 4th November 1918,
while endeavouring to get his men across the Sambre Canal.

A month before his death he wrote to his mother: "My nerves are in
perfect order. I came out again in order to help these boys; directly,
by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by watching their
sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can." Let his
own words be his epitaph:--

"Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery."

Siegfried Sassoon.

POEMS

Preface

This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak
of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory,
honour, dominion or power,

except War.
Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.
The subject of it is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are not to this generation,
This is in no sense consolatory.

They may be to the next.
All the poet can do to-day is to warn.
That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
If I thought the letter of this book would last,
I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives
Prussia,--my ambition and those names will be content; for they will