Do you know what would hold me together on a battlefield? The sense that I was perpetuating the language in which Keats and the rest of them wrote!
Meaning of the quote
This quote expresses the idea that the English soldier Wilfred Owen found strength and unity in the language of great writers like Keats. Even while facing the horrors of battle, Owen felt connected to the literary tradition he was upholding through his use of the English language. The quote suggests that the power of language and literature can provide a sense of purpose and identity, even in the most challenging circumstances.
About Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen was an English poet and soldier who fought in World War I. His powerful poems, such as “Dulce et Decorum est” and “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” vividly depicted the horrors of trench warfare and stood in contrast to the more patriotic war poetry of the time. Tragically, Wilfred Owen was killed in action just a week before the end of the war.
More quotes from Wilfred Owen
I don’t ask myself, is the life congenial to me? But, am I fitted for, am I called to, the Ministry?
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
The war effects me less than it ought. I can do no service to anybody by agitating for news or making dole over the slaughter.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
All a poet can do today is warn.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
When I begin to eliminate from the list all those professions which are impossible from a financial point of view and then those which I feel disinclined to-it leaves nothing.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
Never fear: Thank Home, and Poetry, and the Force behind both.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
The English say, Yours Truly, and mean it. The Italians say, I kiss your feet, and mean, I kick your head.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
All I ask is to be held above the barren wastes of want.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
If I have got to be a soldier, I must be a good one, anything else is unthinkable.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
Do you know what would hold me together on a battlefield? The sense that I was perpetuating the language in which Keats and the rest of them wrote!
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
A Poem does not grow by jerks. As trees in Spring produce a new ring of tissue, so does every poet put forth a fresh outlay of stuff at the same season.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
Flying is the only active profession I would ever continue with enthusiasm after the War.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
I was a boy when I first realized that the fullest life liveable was a Poet’s.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
Those who have no hope pass their old age shrouded with an inward gloom.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
Be bullied, be outraged, by killed, but do not kill.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
I find purer philosophy in a Poem than in a Conclusion of Geometry, a chemical analysis, or a physical law.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
After all my years of playing soldiers, and then of reading History, I have almost a mania to be in the East, to see fighting, and to serve.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
I am only conscious of any satisfaction in Scientific Reading or thinking when it rounds off into a poetical generality and vagueness.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
Numbers of the old people cannot read. Those who can seldom do.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
She is elegant rather than belle.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)
Ambition may be defined as the willingness to receive any number of hits on the nose.
English poet and soldier (1893-1918)