Strange Meeting

By Wilfred Owen

“Strange Meeting” is Wilfred Owen’s 1918 poem in which a soldier escapes from battle into a tunnel that turns out to be Hell, and there meets the enemy soldier he killed the day before. Written in 44 lines of pararhyme, and found among Owen’s papers after his death, it was first published in 1919 and ends with the war’s most famous line of reconciliation: “I am the enemy you killed, my friend.”

Our reading: the dead enemy is the speaker’s double, and the poem’s near-rhymes are the sound of that doubling. Words that almost match, like “killed” and “cold,” echo two men who were almost the same, and the enemy speaks Owen’s own ambition as a poet.

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Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · In Popular Culture · Related Poems

Summary

The speaker seems to escape from battle down a deep tunnel carved through granite, crowded with sleeping or dead men. One of them springs up and looks at him with pitying recognition, and from his dead smile the speaker realizes they are in Hell. It is quiet there, with no blood and no guns, and the speaker says there is no reason to mourn.

The other man answers that there is: the years he will never live. He was a poet who pursued beauty, and with his death, the truth he could have told, “The pity of war,” dies too. The world will go on fighting, he says, and he would have used his wisdom to heal it. Then he reveals who he is: the enemy the speaker bayoneted the day before. He tried to parry the blow, but his hands were too unwilling. The poem ends with him saying, “Let us sleep now,” and breaks off.

The Poem

Owen’s poem is given here in full, following the text of Poems (Chatto and Windus, 1920), edited by Siegfried Sassoon, with its original punctuation.

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 fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand fears that vision’s face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
“Strange, friend,” I said, “Here is no cause to mourn.”
“None,” said the other, “Save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something has been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now . . .

Background

Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) wrote “Strange Meeting” in the first half of 1918, while he was in England on home duty after his treatment for shell shock at Craiglockhart, and before he returned to the Western Front that August. He was killed on November 4, 1918, a week before the Armistice. The poem was among the drafts he left behind, and it was one of seven Owen poems printed in 1919 in Wheels, the anthology edited by Edith Sitwell. It appeared again the next year in Poems, edited by Siegfried Sassoon, with a short editor’s note saying that it had been found among Owen’s papers and “ends on this strange note.”

The title is usually traced to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Revolt of Islam (1818), in which enemies who have fought are pictured side by side as brothers “whom now strange meeting did befall.” The descent into an underworld where the dead speak also recalls Dante’s Inferno. Two lines echo the draft preface Owen wrote for a book of his war poems, which declares, “My subject is War, and the pity of War.” In the poem, the enemy mourns “The pity of war, the pity war distilled.”

Analysis and Themes

“Strange Meeting” is a dream vision, a poem of the dead talking in the underworld, but it is also Owen’s most personal statement about what the war destroyed. Three things repay attention: the setting, the speech of the dead enemy, and the revelation in the final lines.

A Hell Without Guns

The poem opens with an escape that is really a death. The speaker slips “out of the battle” into a tunnel, a place that looks like the dugouts and mine shafts of the Western Front but is carved by “Titanic wars,” the wars of the gods. It is full of “encumbered sleepers,” the dead, and when one of them smiles, the speaker knows “we stood in Hell.”

Yet this Hell is calmer than the world above. “No blood reached there from the upper ground, / And no guns thumped.” For a soldier on the Western Front, the underworld is a relief. That reversal sets the tone of the whole poem: the real torment belongs to the living, and the dead have at last found quiet.

The Enemy Speaks for Owen

Most of the poem belongs to the dead man, and what he mourns is not his body but his unwritten work. He was a poet who went “hunting wild / After the wildest beauty in the world,” and with him dies “the truth untold, / The pity of war, the pity war distilled.” These are Owen’s own words from his preface. The enemy is describing Owen’s mission as a poet, so the man the speaker killed turns out to be a version of himself.

His vision of the future is bleak. Nations will “trek from progress,” retreating into “vain citadels,” and the only cure would have been truths “too deep for taint,” poured out freely, “But not through wounds.” The line “Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were” suggests the invisible wounds of shell shock, the suffering Owen had seen at Craiglockhart and had experienced himself.

“I Am the Enemy You Killed, My Friend”

The revelation comes late, in a single line that holds the whole poem: “I am the enemy you killed, my friend.” “Enemy” and “friend” sit at the two ends of the line, the difference the war insists on and the truth the dead have discovered. The detail that follows is intimate and terrible. The enemy recognizes the speaker by the same frown he wore “as you jabbed and killed,” and admits that he tried to defend himself, but his “hands were loath and cold.”

The poem ends with an invitation rather than a judgment: “Let us sleep now . . .” There is no forgiveness scene and no accusation, only two dead men lying down together, and the unfinished line leaves them in the dark.

Form and Technique

The poem has 44 lines in a single verse paragraph, written in couplets of iambic pentameter, “i AM the EN-e-MY you KILLED, my FRIEND,” with a final line that breaks off after four words. Its great innovation is pararhyme, a kind of half-rhyme in which two words share their consonants but change their vowel: “escaped” and “scooped,” “groined” and “groaned,” “hall” and “Hell,” “friend” and “frowned,” “killed” and “cold.” Owen was not the first to use the device, but no one before him had built a whole poem from it.

The effect is uncanny. Each rhyme is expected and then denied, like an echo that comes back slightly wrong. Often the second word has a lower, darker vowel than the first, so that the couplets seem to sink: “hall” to “Hell,” “moan” to “mourn,” “killed” to “cold.” The sound of the poem enacts its meaning, two men who almost match, a world where nothing resolves, and a rhyme that never quite arrives.

Notable Lines

Three passages trace the poem from its dreamlike opening to its devastating close.

It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.

Lines 1 to 3

The descent into the underworld. “It seemed” marks the whole poem as a dream, and the first pararhyme, “escaped” and “scooped,” sets up the sound the poem will keep.

Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.

Lines 24 to 25

The enemy names what the war has destroyed: not only his life, but the truth he would have told. It is the purpose Owen claimed for his own poetry.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now . . .

Lines 40 to 44

The revelation and the ending. “Enemy” and “friend” frame the first line, and the poem closes on an unfinished invitation to rest.

Themes

Four ideas run through the poem, all of them about what the war cost.

A shared humanity. The enemy is the speaker’s double, a man with the same hopes, and in death they meet as friends.

The waste of war. The dead poet grieves most for “the undone years” and for the work he never did.

The pity of war. The poem gives Owen’s own purpose, to tell the truth about the war’s suffering, to the man his speaker killed.

Death as release. Hell is quieter than the battlefield, and the poem ends with the dead lying down to sleep.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about Owen’s poem.

What Is “Strange Meeting” About?

It is about a soldier who dies and meets, in Hell, the enemy soldier he killed the day before. The enemy mourns the life and the poetry he lost, and reveals that he recognizes his killer, whom he calls “my friend.”

Who Is the Enemy in “Strange Meeting”?

He is an enemy soldier the speaker killed with a bayonet the day before. He is also the speaker’s double, a fellow poet who shares his hopes and speaks Owen’s own belief in “the pity of war.”

When Was “Strange Meeting” Written?

Owen wrote it in 1918, before returning to the front that August. It was found among his papers after his death and first published in 1919 in Wheels, then in Poems in 1920.

What Is Pararhyme in “Strange Meeting”?

Pararhyme is a half-rhyme in which two words share their consonants but have different vowels, such as “hall” and “Hell” or “killed” and “cold.” Owen uses it for every couplet, which gives the poem its haunting, unresolved sound.

Why Is It Called “Strange Meeting”?

The meeting is strange because two soldiers who killed each other’s kind meet as friends in the afterlife. The phrase is usually traced to Shelley’s The Revolt of Islam, which describes enemies side by side as brothers “whom now strange meeting did befall.”

Glossary

These words help unlock the poem’s underworld.

• groined (line 3): Carved into arches, like the vaulted roof of a crypt.
• encumbered (line 4): Weighed down or crowded together.
• bestirred (line 5): Roused or woken.
• flues (line 13): Shafts or channels, here the passages of the tunnel.
• citadels (line 33): Fortresses.
• stint (line 37): Limit; “without stint” means freely.
• cess (line 38): A cesspool, filth.
• loath (line 43): Unwilling.

In Popular Culture

The poem’s ending has been set to music, carved in stone, and borrowed for a novel.

War Requiem (1962): Benjamin Britten made the poem the climax of his War Requiem, sung by tenor and baritone soloists, with “Let us sleep now” leading into the work’s final prayer.

Strange Meeting (1971): Susan Hill took the title of her First World War novel, about two young officers on the Western Front, from the poem.

Shrewsbury Abbey (1993): The line “I am the enemy you killed, my friend” is inscribed on the memorial sculpture Symmetry, placed in the abbey grounds for the centenary of Owen’s birth.

Related Poems

These poems share Owen’s war, or his vision of the enemy and the dead.

• The Man He Killed by Thomas Hardy: A soldier realizes the man he shot was just like him, the same discovery in plainer words.
• Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen: Owen’s account of a gas attack, and his most famous attack on the glory of war.
• Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen: A sonnet asking what funeral rites exist for soldiers who “die as cattle.”
• Channel Firing by Thomas Hardy: Another poem in which the dead speak, woken by the guns of a world preparing for war.
• In Flanders Fields by John McCrae: The war’s most famous poem in the voice of the dead, with a very different message.