Futility is a poem by Wilfred Owen, possibly the most renowned poet of World War I, written in May of 1918 and published as no. 153 in The Complete Poems and Fragments.
Poster by Gerald Spenser Pryse (1882-1956), 1915. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Futility[]
Futility ~ Wilfred Owen ~ Kenneth Branagh
Move him into the sun —
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds,—
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved — still warm — too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
— O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?
Commentary[]
The poem is well-known for its departure from Owen's famous style of including disturbing and graphic images in his work; the poem instead having a more soothing, somewhat light-hearted feel to it in comparison. It details an event where a group of soldiers attempt to revive an unconscious soldier by moving him into the warm sunlight on a snowy meadow. However, the "kind old sun" has absolutely no effect on the soldier - he has died.
See also[]
References[]
- Owen, Wilfred. "Futility". The First World War Poetry Digital Archive. University of Oxford. http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/item/4594.
- Kenneth Simcox (2000). "Futility". The Wilfred Owen Association. http://www.wilfredowen.org.uk/poetry/futility. Retrieved 2011-05-16.
External link[]
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