Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of the boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Owen's poem appears to inspired by the many deaths of soldiers he saw each day in the trenches of war. He starts the poem off, describing innocent young men being sent to war like cattle are sent to slaughter. He abandons his original views of war as heroic and glorious, and describes it as one...
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