No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of the boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Owen's poem appears to inspired by the many deaths of soldiers he saw each day in the trenches of war. He starts the poem off, describing innocent young men being sent to war like cattle are sent to slaughter. He abandons his original views of war as heroic and glorious, and describes it as one large funeral where young soldiers are not given a proper goodbye. Instead of the typical church bells that are sounded when someone dies under ordinary circumstances, there are only the sounds of gunshots when a soldier dies, he writes.
A powerful line in this poem reads, "No mockeries now for them; no prayers, nor bells (p. 43)." Owen seems to now believe that traditional rites for death are mockeries. This suggests that he has a new grasp of the meaning of life and death, and he no longer believes that traditional bells and ceremonies are what death it about. For him, these rites mocked a tragic ending.
The second stanza is very powerful as Owen writes how there will be no candles to mourn the dead soldiers, but only the candles of their blazed life seen in their eyes. These moments are their true good-byes, as the last light of consciousness dies. However, he observes that war does not...
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