Poems (Wilfred Owen)

<h2> Insensibility </h2> <p>I<br/> <br/> Happy are men who yet before they are killed<br/> Can let their veins run cold.<br/> Whom no compassion fleers<br/> Or makes their feet<br/> Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.<br/> The front line withers,<br/> But they are troops who fade, not flowers<br/> For poets' tearful fooling:<br/> Men, gaps for filling<br/> Losses who might have fought<br/> Longer; but no one bothers.<br/></p> <p>II<br/> <br/> And some cease feeling<br/> Even themselves or for themselves.<br/> Dullness best solves<br/> The tease and doubt of shelling,<br/> And Chance's strange arithmetic<br/> Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.<br/> They keep no check on Armies' decimation.<br/></p> <p>III<br/> <br/> Happy are these who lose imagination:<br/> They have enough to carry with ammunition.<br/> Their spirit drags no pack.<br/> Their old wounds save with cold can not more ache.<br/> Having seen all things red,<br/> Their eyes are rid<br/> Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.<br/> And terror's first constriction over,<br/> Their hearts remain small drawn.<br/> Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle<br/> Now long since ironed,<br/> Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.<br/></p> <p>IV<br/> <br/> Happy the soldier home, with not a notion<br/> How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,<br/> And many sighs are drained.<br/> Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:<br/> His days are worth forgetting more than not.<br/> He sings along the march<br/> Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,<br/> The long, forlorn, relentless trend<br/> From larger day to huger night.<br/></p> <p>V<br/> <br/> We wise, who with a thought besmirch<br/> Blood over all our soul,<br/> How should we see our task<br/> But through his blunt and lashless eyes?<br/> Alive, he is not vital overmuch;<br/> Dying, not mortal overmuch;<br/> Nor sad, nor proud,<br/> Nor curious at all.<br/> He cannot tell<br/> Old men's placidity from his.<br/></p> <p>VI<br/> <br/> But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,<br/> That they should be as stones.<br/> Wretched are they, and mean<br/> With paucity that never was simplicity.<br/> By choice they made themselves immune<br/> To pity and whatever mourns in man<br/> Before the last sea and the hapless stars;<br/> Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;<br/> Whatever shares<br/> The eternal reciprocity of tears.<br/></p> <p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"></SPAN></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />