The Send-Off

Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen portrait

1893 to 1918

Poem Image
Track 1

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They were not ours:
Winked to the guard.
Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
Stood staring hard,
Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
Who gave them flowers.
Up half-known roads.
As men's are, dead.
So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.
Shall they return to beatings of great bells
We never heard to which front these were sent.
In wild trainloads?
Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May creep back, silent, to still village wells
To the siding-shed,
Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray

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Poet portrait