Spring Offensive
Spring Offensive
Original Text
Wilfred Owen, Poems By Wilfred Owen with an Introduction by Siegfried Sassoon (London: Chatto and Windus, 1921): 20-21. PR 6029 W4P6 Robarts Library
1Halted against the shade of a last hill,
2They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
3And, finding comfortable chests and knees
4Carelessly slept. But many there stood still
5To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
6Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.
7Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
8By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,
9For though the summer oozed into their veins
10Like the injected drug for their bones' pains,
11Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,
12Fearfully flashed the sky's mysterious glass.
13Hour after hour they ponder the warm field--
14And the far valley behind, where the buttercups
15Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,
16Where even the little brambles would not yield,
17But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;
18They breathe like trees unstirred.
19Till like a cold gust thrilled the little word
20At which each body and its soul begird
21And tighten them for battle. No alarms
22Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste--
23Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced
24The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.
25O larger shone that smile against the sun,--
26Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.
27So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together
28Over an open stretch of herb and heather
29Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned
30With fury against them; and soft sudden cups
31Opened in thousands for their blood; and the green slopes
32Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.
33Of them who running on that last high place
34Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up
35On the hot blast and fury of hell's upsurge,
36Or plunged and fell away past this world's verge,
37Some say God caught them even before they fell.
38But what say such as from existence' brink
39Ventured but drave too swift to sink.
40The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,
41And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames
42With superhuman inhumanities,
43Long-famous glories, immemorial shames--
44And crawling slowly back, have by degrees
45Regained cool peaceful air in wonder--
46Why speak they not of comrades that went under?
Publication Start Year
1921
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1996-2000.
Form