So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and strops,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Play "Parable"

Click this sound icon to hear an extract from a letter written in July 1918 by Wilfred Owen to Sir Osbert Sitwell. In the letter he reflects on his duties as an officer and compares his soldiers to Christ as he prepares them for battle. Follow the link below for a discussion of Christian imagery in World War I poetry.

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born on March 18, 1893. He was on the Continent teaching until he visited a hospital for the wounded and then decided, in September, 1915, to return to England and enlist. "I came out 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. I have done the first" (October, 1918).

Owen was injured in March 1917 and sent home; he was fit for duty in August, 1918, and returned to the front. November 4, just seven days before the Armistice, he was caught in a German machine gun attack and killed. He was twenty-five when he died.

The bells were ringing on November 11, 1918, in Shrewsbury to celebrate the Armistice when the doorbell rang at his parent's home, bringing them the telegram telling them their son was dead.

Wilfred Owen

On Seeing a Piece of Our Heavy Artillery Brought into Action

Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm,
Great Gun towering towards Heaven, about to curse;
Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse
Huge imprecations like a blasting charm!
Reach at that Arrogance which needs thy harm,
And beat it down before its sins grow worse.
Spend our resentment, cannon, -- yea, disburse
Our gold in shapes of flame, our breaths in storm.

Yet, for men's sakes whom thy vast malison
Must wither innocent of enmity,
Be not withdrawn, dark arm, thy spoilure done,
Safe to the bosom of our prosperity.
But when thy spell be cast complete and whole,
May God curse thee, and cut thee from our soul!

This is an example of British heavy artillery with a range of about twenty miles. The Germans called this particular British weapon "The Killjoy." The Germans had their own version of heavy artillery; one such weapon was "Big Bertha," and it could fire a shell a distance of thirty miles. As you can imagine, the damage inflicted by these great guns was devastating and the noise was horrifying. The constant barrage of these guns for hours and even days on end led to many cases of "shellshock" among the troops. Modris Eksteins describes this scene in The Rites of Spring:

The artillery barrage is deafening. When the air is still, the din can be heard faintly in London and Paris. Sometimes the pounding lasts for days. In June 1916 at the Somme it continues for seven days and nights. Field artillery, medium artillery, and heavy howitzers. the fifteen-inch-caliber gun of the British can fire a shell of fourteen hundred pounds. "Big Bertha" of the Germans, with a caliber of seventeen inches, can project a missile weighing over a ton. At Verdun in 1916 the Germans bring in thirteen of these twenty-ton monsters. Each is moved into position by nine tractors; a crane is required to insert the shell. The impact of this shell annihilates buildings; it shatters windows in a two-mile radius. In August 1914 these huge machines of war had demolished the purportedly impregnable forts of Liège. As the Krupp guns "walked" their shells toward the final target, Belgian defenders inside the fort went mad.

For concentrated attack there is usually one field gun for every ten yards under fire, and one heavy-- six-inch caliber and up-- for every twenty yards. When the huge shells burst, they ravage the earth with their violence, hurling trees, rock, mud, torsos, and other debris hundreds of feet into the air. Craters the size of swimming pools remain. . . . The small and medium shells, which make up most of the barrage, are less sensational in their effect. But to the soldier they too can mean annihilation without trace. "A signaller had just stepped out," wrote a medical officer of the 2nd Royal Welch Fusiliers, "when a shell burst on him, leaving not a vestige that could seen anywhere near." Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring (1989), pp. 139-40.

More Poetry

Futility

Move him into the sun--
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
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?

At a Calvary Near The Ancre

One ever hangs where shelled roads part.
In this war He too lost a limb,
But His disciples hide apart;
And now the Soldiers bear with Him.

Near Golgotha strolls many a priest,
And in their faces there is pride
That they were flesh-marked by the Beast
By whom the gentle Christ's denied.

The scribes on all the people shove
And bawl allegiance to the state,
But they who love the greater love
Lay down their life; they do not hate.

[A "Calvary" is a statue of the crucified Christ; these crucifixes are erected at many crossroads in France.]
 

Written probably in late 19l7 or early 1918, Wilfred Owen having been involved in fighting near tbe river Ancre in January 19l7. As in "The Parable of the Old Man and the Young," WO adapts biblical detail to fit the war. In the Gospel story, the soldiers kept watch at the cross while Christ's disciples hid in fear of the authorities; priests and scribes passed by in scorn. The Church sends priests to the trenches, where they watch the common soldier being, as it were, crucified, and they take pride in minor wounds (flesh-marked, l. 7) as a sign of their opposition to Germany (the Beast). Flesh-marked, however, carries a further meaning: the Devil used to be believed to leave his finger-marks on the flesh of his followers (cf. Revelation 14: 9-10). Thus the Church's hatred of Germany (l. 12) puts it in the Devil's following, and the priests' wounds are signs not so much of opposition to the Devil Germany as of allegiance to the Devil War. Christ said "Love one another" and "Love your enemies"; despite the exhortations of Church and State, WO perceives that "pure Christianity will not fit in with pure patriotism."

Calvary or Golgotha (both words meaning "the place of the skull") was the site of the Crucifixion.

Lines 11-12. John 15:l3: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

At a Calvary Near The Ancre

One ever hangs where shelled roads part.
In this war He too lost a limb,
But His disciples hide apart;
And now the Soldiers bear with Him.

Near Golgotha strolls many a priest,
And in their faces there is pride
That they were flesh-marked by the Beast
By whom the gentle Christ's denied.

The scribes on all the people shove
And bawl allegiance to the state,
But they who love the greater love
Lay down their life; they do not hate.

[A "Calvary" is a statue of the crucified Christ; these crucifixes are erected at many crossroads in France.]
 

Written probably in late 19l7 or early 1918, Wilfred Owen having been involved in fighting near tbe river Ancre in January 19l7. As in "The Parable of the Old Man and the Young," WO adapts biblical detail to fit the war. In the Gospel story, the soldiers kept watch at the cross while Christ's disciples hid in fear of the authorities; priests and scribes passed by in scorn. The Church sends priests to the trenches, where they watch the common soldier being, as it were, crucified, and they take pride in minor wounds (flesh-marked, l. 7) as a sign of their opposition to Germany (the Beast). Flesh-marked, however, carries a further meaning: the Devil used to be believed to leave his finger-marks on the flesh of his followers (cf. Revelation 14: 9-10). Thus the Church's hatred of Germany (l. 12) puts it in the Devil's following, and the priests' wounds are signs not so much of opposition to the Devil Germany as of allegiance to the Devil War. Christ said "Love one another" and "Love your enemies"; despite the exhortations of Church and State, WO perceives that "pure Christianity will not fit in with pure patriotism."

Calvary or Golgotha (both words meaning "the place of the skull") was the site of the Crucifixion.

Lines 11-12. John 15:l3: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

John Singer Sargent's painting Gassed

John Singer Sargent's painting Gassed hangs in the Imperial War Museum in London; the canvas is over seven feet high and twenty feet long. This impressive painting depicts soldiers blinded by gas being led in lines back to the hospital tents and the dressing stations; the men lie on the ground all about the tents waiting for treatment.

"With mustard gas the effects did not become apparent for up to twelve hours. But then it began to rot the body, within and without. The skin blistered, the eyes became extremely painful and nausea and vomiting began. Worse, the gas attacked the bronchial tubes, stripping off the mucous membrane. The pain was almost beyond endurance and most cases had to be strapped to their beds. Death took up to four or five weeks. A nurse wrote:

I wish those people who write so glibly about this being a holy war and the orators who talk so much about going on no matter how long the war lasts and what it may mean, could see a case--to say nothing of ten cases--of mustard gas in its early stages--could see the poor things burnt and blistered all over with great mustard-coloured suppurating blisters, with blind eyes . . . all sticky and stuck together, and always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying that their throats are closing and they know they will choke."

This passage is from John Ellis, Eye-Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I, (1976), pp. 66-7.