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Happy are men who yet before they are killed. Can let their veins run cold. Whom no compassion fleers. Or makes their feet. Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers. The front line withers. But they are troops who fade, not flowers, For poets’ tearful fooling: Men, gaps for filling: Losses, who might have fought. Longer; but no one bothers.
- Stanza 1
- Stanza 3
- Stanza 4
- Stanza 5
- Stanza 6
Stanza 1 opens with Owen apparently propounding his opinion that the fighting man is better off having no sympathetic imagination, ("fleers" = mocks). Lines 4 & 5's horrifying image echoes a remark Owen made to his sister Mary in March 1918 - They are dying again at Beaumont Hamel which already in 1916 was cobbled with skulls… (The German breakthro...
The word "happy" crops up again. If to lose one's imagination (19) implies having had one in the first place, battle seems an unlikely occasion for its surrender. Owen suggests that with imagination "lost", physical burdens may be unavoidable but that the men's "spirit drags no pack" (21), that "having seen all things red" (23) spilled blood no lon...
The expression "soldier home" (31) must mean repatriate not one who has not gone out. How then can he be "with not a notion" of the business of war. Who is the lad "whose mind was never trained" (34)? Trained in what? In sensibility? Now comes the turning point. So far it has all been about our Happy Warrior. Suddenly in mid-stanza pronouns change ...
Stanza 5 continues in the first person (we) (40-3) but then reverts to third (he, his). Seemingly Owen is arguing a dichotomy between us (the wise) whose thoughts of guilt and the insensible ones, "not vital overmuch" (44), not even "mortal overmuch". (45) not sad, proud, curious. In other words, not much anything really. If this comes from losing ...
In stanza 6 Owen seems to confute the arguments he started out with, that the soldier should abandon feeling in the interests of keeping sane. Can Owen have it both ways? Well, yes if we see the irony in that first quotation, see it not as advice but as a wry observation. The tone of the last stanza suggests that the kind of happiness achieved thro...
Jan 10, 2018 · There he meets a man whom he identifies as a ‘strange friend’. This other man tells the narrator that they both nurtured similar hopes and dreams, but they have both now died, unable to tell the living how piteous and hopeless war really is.
Happy are the men who yet before they are killed. Can let their veins run cold. Whom no compassion fleers. Or makes their feet. Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers. The front line withers, But they are troops who fade, not flowers. For poets’ tearful fooling: Men, gaps for filling. Losses who might have fought.
He describes a mixture of emotions. On the one hand, happiness, joy, pleasure, smiled, laughed - a summation of home life and a mother's love; on the other, sorrowful, grief and grievous, wrongs, sadness and sadder - a result of leaving boyhood behind.
In 1974, another lineup change occurred as Fortney (who wished to maintain his flute study) was replaced by Dan Owen, yet another old friend from Indiana. However, Owen's tenure in the band was brief, and after he left in early 1975, the band chose not to replace him; instead opting to make their material more instrumental.
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Glenn Hoddle Owen was capped 89 times for England and scored 40 goals. He is sixth in the list of all-time top scorers for the England team, behind Harry Kane (61), Wayne Rooney (53), Bobby Charlton (49), Gary Lineker (48) and Jimmy Greaves (44). His 89 caps also place him as England's eleventh most capped player. Owen played for England at the 1998, 2002 and 2006 FIFA World Cups and the 2000 ...
