Curing isolation and unhappiness with the benefits

Wilfred Owen

In “On My personal Songs”, Wilfred Owen offers us a great intellectual insight into the sentiment of solitude through the eye of a child, newly thrown into the universe out of the forearms of his loving mother. Owen also tells us of his idolisation of the Intimate poets, as well as the power that poetry holds in curing persons of their agony. Owen shows these tips in a manner of ways such as by checking out diction, using sound and terminology devices, by manipulating composition and by employing symbolism.

In the first Shakespearian complainte, Owen discusses how these types of great poets are able to cure his sadness “as if perhaps they realized my woe”. By capitalising “Poets” in line 1, this individual shows just how highly this individual thinks of the men, and by using the phrase “unseen” this reveals for the readers that even though these types of poets are certainly not here, they may be still in a position to “ease” Owen’s despair, that they are practically spiritual. The phrase “fashioned” brings up images with the immense skill needed to make such poems, and it again displays just how much Owen idolised these kinds of poets ” in particular the Romantic types such as Keats. The repeating of the expression “many” in “many and several a time” can be physically interpreted as the countless moments that Owen has read these poets’ work, so much that they are right now like a never ending loop in the mind, much like a scripture to a vicar.

In the second complainte, Owen starts off using the first person tense as he tells of just how sometimes even these great art works are not enough to quell his sadness. By contrasting his “dumb tears” while using “language lovely as sobs” he makes an sarcastic and oxymoronic image of just how his inarticulate tears are often cured by this beautiful language. “Sweet as sobs” is also oxymoronic since it contrasts something happy with something that is usually more sombre. Once Owen covers the “hoards of thought”, he is implying that these poems are items to be treasured and retained forever. What “nothing pertaining to me” as well as the hollow, responsive sound they contain go on to show the profound feeling of loss he endures the moment these works of art don’t have an impact on him. The break between lines 6 and 7 further reiterates this kind of idea of desertion and abandonment. By duplicating the word “throb”, and by personifying the poetry, Owen again demonstrates the pain that he feels when these kinds of verses, that are usually so entwined together with his soul, will be completely out of synchronize with the defeating of his heart. The caesura and end-stopped series 8 even more illustrate the feeling of detachment and dislocation that Owen can sometimes think.

Following line almost 8 there is a cambiamento, and Owen begins to rather talk about his “own strange reveries”. He talks about the “low croonings of a motherless child, in gloom” the “oo” noises serving to produce an moon like and darker atmosphere as the “motherless child” is perhaps a manifestation of his greatest fear. Owen was very close to his mother, so the symbol of any “motherless child” implies that there is no take pleasure in or compassion in this kid’s life, and indeed this child would have to “sing his scared self to sleep”. This child serves as an object that Owen has the capacity to project his feelings onto as he is placed, stuck in the “Sick Room” that is the Dunsden Vicarage. With 13, simply by “Dreading the Dark”, Owen is personifying the darker into a mark of undefined fear ” as everybody experiences different “Dark”. The subsequent, “thou darest not illume” shows Owen using archaic language which in turn further stimulates the idiotic fears which can be held the moment one is exclusively.

After the volta the poem as well changes its structure to assist in emphasising the difference in direction and topic. The poem should go from a regular Shakespearian sonnet to a more irregular Petrarchan sonnet using a rhyme structure of EFEFFE. In the final 6 lines Owen is basically trying to convince the reader that he as well is good at writing poems that can lighten people’s spirits, and by having fun with the composition and genre of the poem, he is looking to demonstrate that he is able of doing that. By using the word “thou” in-line 12, this individual changes anyone and starts to address you, in an attempt to sound more graceful. By using different archaic words such as “shouldst” and “darest” Owen once again tries to evaluate himself to the great poets of outdated. In the last line, Owen hopes that his “voice may haply lend the ease”. This kind of line obviously shows Owen’s longing being like the superb Romantic poets. This line is also satrical ” because Owen will finally turn into a great poet person, however his “voice” turns into the words of the Great War, and he ultimately loses his life just before he is able to get pleasure from his popularity.

“On My Songs” is a composition based around loneliness and misery, and the pathway to happiness that may be poetry. By making use of diction, appears, structure, repetition and personification amongst different techniques, Owen unifies his key concepts into a strong, personal composition about how he felt if he was at Dunsden Vicarage, and exactly how one day he hopes that his poems will remedy people with their “woes”, as other beautifully constructed wording had completed for him.