Anthem for Doomed Youth

By Wilfred Owen

“Anthem for Doomed Youth” is Wilfred Owen’s 1917 sonnet about the soldiers of the First World War who “die as cattle,” asking what funeral rites they can possibly receive. Owen drafted its 14 lines at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, with suggestions from Siegfried Sassoon, and it was published in 1920, two years after Owen was killed a week before the Armistice.

Our reading: the poem holds two funerals. At the front, the guns, rifles, and shells perform a deafening mockery of the service. At home, the rites turn silent and are carried out by the people left behind, and that silence is the only true anthem the poem allows.

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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 asks what bells will toll for soldiers slaughtered like cattle, and answers that there will be none. The only sounds marking their deaths are the roar of the guns, the rattle of rifles, and the shriek of falling shells, which stand in for the prayers, bells, and choirs of a proper funeral. Far away, bugles call for them from the grieving English counties they came from.

The second part asks what candles will be lit for them. The answer moves from the battlefield to the home front: the light will be tears in the eyes of boys, the funeral cloth will be the pale faces of girls, the flowers will be the tenderness of those who wait, and every dusk will bring the lowered blinds of a house in mourning.

The Poem

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

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Background

Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) was an English officer in the Manchester Regiment and the most admired poet of the First World War. After months on the Western Front, he was diagnosed with shell shock in 1917 and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh. There, in August 1917, he met Siegfried Sassoon, a fellow patient and an established war poet, who encouraged him to write about the war as he had seen it.

Owen wrote “Anthem for Doomed Youth” in September and October 1917 and worked through several drafts with Sassoon, whose handwriting appears on the surviving manuscripts alongside Owen’s. An early draft was titled “Anthem for Dead Youth,” and it was Sassoon who suggested “Doomed.” He also proposed the word “patient” in line 13. Owen left Craiglockhart in November 1917 and returned to France in 1918. He won the Military Cross and was killed on November 4, 1918, at the Sambre–Oise Canal, aged 25. His mother received the telegram on Armistice Day, as the church bells of Shrewsbury rang to celebrate the peace.

Only five of Owen’s poems were published in his lifetime, and this was not one of them. It first appeared in Poems (1920), the collection Sassoon edited with help from Edith Sitwell, which also printed the draft preface in which Owen wrote, “My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.”

Analysis and Themes

The poem is built as a funeral service that cannot take place. Three things repay attention: the way weapons take over the rites, the move from the front to the home front, and the bitter irony of its title.

A Funeral Conducted by Guns

The octave takes the parts of a Christian funeral one by one and hands each to the war. The passing-bell, once tolled to mark a death, becomes “the monstrous anger of the guns.” The prayers become rifle fire that can only “patter out their hasty orisons,” and “patter” is well chosen: the word comes from paternoster, the Lord’s Prayer gabbled at speed. The choir becomes the “shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells.” The service is still happening, in a sense, but it is being performed by the machines that killed the men it mourns.

The opening image sets the terms. Men who “die as cattle” are killed in herds, anonymously, as in a slaughterhouse. They have no individual deaths, so they get no individual funerals. When the speaker says there are “No mockeries for them,” he means that any church ceremony would be a mockery of what happened, and that the din of the guns is the only honest requiem left.

From the Front to the Home Front

Line 8 is the hinge. The bugles calling “from sad shires” carry the poem out of France and back to the English counties the soldiers came from. From then on, the noise stops. The sestet repeats the funeral pattern, candles, pall, and flowers, but now each rite is performed by grieving people rather than by objects. The candles are the light of tears in the eyes of boys. The pall, the cloth draped over a coffin, is “the pallor of girls’ brows,” a pun that turns the funeral cloth into the white faces of the bereaved. The flowers are “the tenderness of patient minds.”

The final line is the quietest in the poem and the most devastating. Families in mourning drew their blinds, and “each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds” makes nightfall itself that gesture, repeated every evening. The grief does not end with a single service. It returns daily, as regularly as the dark.

An Anthem That Is a Lament

An anthem is a song of praise, whether a hymn sung in church or a national anthem sung to rally a country. Owen’s poem praises nothing. It mourns, and its title quietly turns the patriotic sense of “anthem” against itself. “Doomed” matters too, because it changes the poem’s subject from those already dead to those still fighting, young men whose deaths are certain before they happen. Sassoon’s one-word suggestion made the poem a warning as well as an elegy.

History supplied a last, cruel irony. The poem begins by asking what passing-bells will ring for the dead. When Owen’s own death was announced to his family, the bells were ringing all over England, not for him, but for the end of the war.

Form and Technique

The poem is a 14-line sonnet in iambic pentameter that blends the two main sonnet traditions. Like a Petrarchan sonnet, it divides into an octave and a sestet, each opening with a question: “What passing-bells” and “What candles.” Its rhyme scheme, ABABCDCD EFFEGG, borrows from the English sonnet instead: the octave rhymes in alternating quatrains, and the poem closes on a rhymed couplet, “minds” and “blinds.” Choosing the sonnet at all is pointed, since it is the traditional form of love poetry and of the patriotic war sonnets of 1914, such as Rupert Brooke’s.

Sound does most of the work. The octave is loud: “stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle” imitates machine-gun fire through alliteration and onomatopoeia, and “shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells” shrieks with long vowels and hissing consonants. The sestet is soft, full of long vowels and gentle sounds, with “slow dusk” slowing the final line to a near stop. The meter is regular but not rigid: the first line ends on an extra unstressed syllable (“CAT-tle”), and lines 2 and 3 open on a stressed beat, “ON-ly,” like a blow.

Notable Lines

Three passages trace the poem’s journey from the noise of the front to the silence of the home.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Lines 1 to 2

The question and its answer. Soldiers are reduced to cattle, and the only bell that tolls for them is artillery fire, which is not grief but “anger.”

Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.

Lines 3 to 4

The most famous sound effect in war poetry. The alliteration on “r” and the stutter of “t” sounds let you hear the gunfire, while “hasty orisons” turns it into rushed and meaningless prayer.

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Lines 13 to 14

The closing couplet brings the poem home and into silence. The only flowers are the love of those who wait, and the only ritual is the drawing of blinds, repeated each evening as grief settles in for good.

Themes

Four ideas run through the poem, all of them about what war does to the way we honor the dead.

The dehumanizing scale of war. Soldiers who “die as cattle” are killed in herds, with no individual deaths and no individual rites.

Religion made hollow. Bells, prayers, choirs, and candles are all present in the poem, but each has been emptied out or taken over by the weapons of war.

Grief at home. The real mourning happens far from the front, in the faces, tears, and daily routines of the families left behind.

The pity of war. The poem does not glorify sacrifice. It asks readers to feel the waste of young lives, which is what Owen meant by “the pity of War.”

Frequently Asked Questions

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

What Is “Anthem for Doomed Youth” About?

It is about soldiers killed in the First World War who receive no proper funeral. On the battlefield, the only rites are the sounds of guns and shells, and at home, the mourning is carried out silently by grieving families.

Is “Anthem for Doomed Youth” a Sonnet?

Yes. It is a 14-line sonnet in iambic pentameter that mixes two traditions: it splits into an octave and a sestet like a Petrarchan sonnet, but ends with a rhymed couplet like an English sonnet.

When Was “Anthem for Doomed Youth” Written and Published?

Owen wrote it in September and October 1917 at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh. It was published after his death, in Poems (1920), edited by Siegfried Sassoon.

What Is the Theme of “Anthem for Doomed Youth”?

The main theme is the loss of dignity in mass death. Soldiers who “die as cattle” cannot be mourned with the usual rites, so the war supplies a mockery of a funeral, and the true grief falls to the families at home.

Why Is It Called “Anthem for Doomed Youth”?

The title is ironic. An anthem is a song of praise, but the poem is a lament, and “doomed” means the young soldiers are fated to die. Owen’s early draft read “Dead Youth,” and Siegfried Sassoon suggested “Doomed.”

Glossary

These words carry the poem’s funeral imagery.

• passing-bells (line 1): Church bells tolled to announce a death.
• patter (line 4): Recite quickly and mechanically; the word comes from paternoster, the Lord’s Prayer.
• orisons (line 4): Prayers.
• mockeries (line 5): Empty or insulting imitations, here of funeral ceremonies.
• shires (line 8): The counties of England, the soldiers’ home districts.
• pall (line 12): The cloth spread over a coffin at a funeral.
• drawing-down of blinds (line 14): The custom of lowering window blinds in a house of mourning.

In Popular Culture

The sonnet has been set to music, dramatized, and borrowed for titles for more than a century.

War Requiem (1962): Benjamin Britten set the poem for tenor solo in the opening movement of his War Requiem, first performed at the consecration of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral.

Regeneration (1991): Pat Barker’s novel, the first of her Regeneration trilogy, dramatizes Owen and Sassoon at Craiglockhart, including their work together on the poem’s drafts.

The Passing Bells (2014): The BBC’s First World War drama took its title from the poem’s opening line.

Anthems for Doomed Youth (2015): The Libertines named their third album, and its title track, after the poem.

Related Poems

These poems show the war that Owen wrote about, and the ways other poets chose to remember it.

• Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen: Owen’s other great war poem, a gas attack described so vividly that it demolishes the idea that dying for your country is sweet.
• The Soldier by Rupert Brooke: The patriotic 1914 sonnet that shaped how Britain first saw the war, and a view of sacrifice that Owen’s poem rejects.
• In Flanders Fields by John McCrae: A 1915 poem in the voice of the dead, which calls on the living to carry on the fight.
• Channel Firing by Thomas Hardy: Written months before the war began, it imagines naval gunfire so loud it wakes the dead in their graves.
• The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Tennyson: A Victorian tribute to soldiers sent to their deaths by a blunder, and a useful contrast to Owen’s refusal to glorify.