Post A Poem A Day – Page 19 – Interesting Literature

‘Insensibility’: A Poem by Wilfred Owen

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Insensibility’ is one of the longest poems written by the pre-eminent English poet of the First World War, Wilfred Owen (1893-1918). Owen, who famously said that ‘the Poetry is in the pity’, explores in ‘Insensibility’ the way the war necessitates a closing-off of feeling in those who experience the horrors of the trenches. ‘Insensibility’ is about this loss of feeling and what it signifies. As well as being one of Wilfred Owen’s longest poems, ‘Insensibility’ is also, we feel, one of his great achievements as a poet.

‘Insensibility’ by Wilfred Owen

Happy are men who yet before they are killed

Can let their veins run cold.

Whom no compassion fleers

Or makes their feet

Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.

‘Song of Myself’: A Poem by Walt Whitman

‘Song of Myself’ is perhaps the definitive achievement of the great nineteenth-century American poet Walt Whitman (1819-92), so we felt that it was a good choice for the second in our ‘post a poem a day’ feature. ‘Song of Myself’ is long, but well worth devoting ten or fifteen minutes to reading, whether you’re familiar with Whitman’s distinctive and psalmic free verse style or new to the world of Walt Whitman’s poetry. Below is the 1892 version of the poem, completed shortly before Whitman’s death in the same year.

‘Song of Myself’ by Walt Whitman

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

‘Tintern Abbey’: A Poem by William Wordsworth

‘Tintern Abbey’ by William Wordsworth, or to give it its fuller title, ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’, or to give it its absolutely full title, ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798’, is one of Wordsworth’s finest and most celebrated poetic achievements. So ‘Tintern Abbey’ seems like a good poem to select for our new ‘post a poem a day’ feature, which will see us sharing one of our favourite poems every day.

‘Tintern Abbey’ by William Wordsworth

Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.