Greater Love

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.


Analysis/Commentary

"Greater love" is a really nice poem, one of my favourites since it doese not deal with the critique of war so mouch, but with the brotherhood love that is established between soldiers. Owen calls this love "Greater" than erotic love; in fact he honors it with words souch as fierce, pure, exquisite because it is the love of who suffered and died for their nation. Although Owen dislikes the cityzens because they are not able to comprehend and grasp this sacrifical love. this love is actually compared to the one that Christ had towards the sinners. The sacrifice of the soldiers actually make this love pure, grater in beauty and more real, greater enough to obscure erotic love and make it seem a shame.