Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918)


Beauty

[Notes for an unfinished poem]

A shrapnel ball
Just where the wet skin glistened when he swam.
Like a full-opened sea-anemone.
We both said 'What a beauty! What a beauty, lad!'
I knew that in that flower he saw a hope
Of living on, and seeing again the roses of his home.
Beauty is that which pleases and delights
'Not bringing personal advantage' - Kant.
I laughed. But later on I heard
That a canker worked into that crimson flower
And that he sank with it [            ] over
And laid it with the anemones off Dover


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