Exposure - Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918)

CONTEXT

• Owen fought and died in WW1; unlike Tennyson, he knew first-hand the true horrors of trench warfare.
• The winter of 1917 was particlarly cold.
• During this, Owen had to lie outside for days to spy on the enemy.
• He wrote the poem in 1918.

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive

us...

Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent...

Low, drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient...

Worried by silence, sentries, whisper, curious, nervous,

But nothing happens.

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,

Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.

Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,

Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.

What are we doing here?

The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow...

We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.

Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army

Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey,

But nothing happens.

Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.

Less deadly than the air that shudders back with snow,

With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew,

We watch them wandering up and down the wind's

nochalance,

But nothing happens.

Plae flakes with ********* stealth come feeling for our faces - 

We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare,

snow-dazed,

Deep into grassier ditches. So we drwose, sun-dozed,

Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.

- Is it that we are dying?

Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed

With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;

For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;

Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed, -

We turn back to our dying.

Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;

Nor ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.

For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;

Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,

For love of God seems dying.

Tonight, this frost will fasten on this mud and us,

Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.

The burying-party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp,

Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,

But nothing happens.

"The merciless iced winds that knive us" - firts person plural pronoun puts you in their position, sort of says that the weather is againt them, links to the title. Terminal caesura shows their paranoia at waiting.

"But nothing happens" - people are dying, but nothing happens.

"on us the doors are closed" - collective pronoun creates unity. They feel disconnected because they are in the middle of nowhere.