Owen, Wilfred Edward Salter
British Poet
Born 18 March 1893 in Plas Wilmot, Oswestry, England
Died 04 November 1918 in Sambre-Oise Canal, Ors, France
In 2019, the new ‘Futility’ statue was unveiled in Hamilton Square, Birkenhead, within sight of the town’s cenotaph. Sculpted by Jim Whelan from an original design by the Institute’s art master David Jones, the bronze figure embodies the universal soldier — weary, reflective, yet unbowed. On its plinth are inscribed Owen’s words, a lasting reminder of the 88 Old Boys of the school, including both Owen and Reginald Dodd, 2128, Killed in Action at the Battle of Fromelles, who gave their lives in the Great War.
Futility
Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds—
Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?
Wilfred Owen 1918
With an Identity Disc
If ever I dreamed of my dead name
High in the heart of London, unsurpassed
By Time for ever, and the Fugitive, Fame,
There seeking a long sanctuary at last,
I better that; and recollect with shame
How once I longed to hide it from life's heats
Under those holy cypresses, the same
That shade always the quiet place of Keats,
Now rather thank I God there is no risk
Of gravers scoring it with florid screed,
But let my death be memoried on this disc.
Wear it, sweet friend. Inscribe no date nor deed.
But may thy heart-beat kiss it night and day,
Until the name grow vague and wear away.
Wilfred Owen
The Next War
"War's a joke for me and you,
While we know such dreams are true."
Siegfried Sassoon
Out there, we've walked quite friendly up to Death,-
Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland,-
Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand.
We've sniffed the green thick odour of his breath,-
Our eyes wept, but our courage didn't writhe.
He's spat at us with bullets and he's coughed
Shrapnel. We chorussed when he sang aloft,
We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe.
Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier's paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed, -knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.
Wilfred Owen
