SOURCE: "Mainly Wilfred Owen," in War Poets, 1914-1918, Longmans, Green, 1958, pp. 32-9.

In the following excerpt, Blunden explores the influences on Owen's poetry and characterizes his poems as richly imaginative and distinguished by a "spiritual and mental dignity."

The poems of Owen on war express many aspects, as his own attempted classification shows, but perhaps pity is the one he felt most. In "Strange Meeting" the ghost of the enemy soldier whom he has bayoneted, calling him friend in the world of shades, says that he might otherwise have made a gift to posterity. But:

 It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in...