Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, GREATER LOVE, by WILFRED OWEN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

GREATER LOVE, by         Recitation         Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Red lips are not so red
Last Line: Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.
Subject(s): Love; Pain; Soldiers' Writings; World War I; Suffering; Misery; First World War


Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce love they bear
Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft, --
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft, --
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear,
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

Heart, you were never hot
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.






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