Poetry And Personification In Wilfred Owen's On My Song

1333 Words6 Pages

In ‘On My Songs’ by Wilfred Owen, his ideas about poetry and its importance are voiced throughout the duration of the poem. He does this by using various techniques like metaphors, diction, and personification amongst others.
One of the main ideas we can gather from this poem is that he believes that poetry is a form of release. It begins with: ‘Though unseen Poets, many and many a time/ Have answered me as if they knew my woe/…fashioned so their rime…easing the flow/ Of my dumb tears’. In this quote, Owen seems to be paying homage to all the romantic poets (like Keats and Shelly) whose poetry has been able to soothe him and has even often resounded deeply with his situation or with the problems he was going through. At the time, when Owen …show more content…

His purpose portrayed in the last five lines of the sestet implies his empathy and concern for those who are suffering like he did. He writes: ‘Low croonings of a motherless child…/One night, if thou shouldst lie in this Sick Room/Dreading the Dark…/Listen; my voice may haply lend thee ease’. In this he states that he too will be there for the readers. The phrase ‘motherless child’ is a metaphor, I believe. Though he had a mother, he may feel as though in this time of despair he had no one to guide and comfort him therefore being ‘motherless’ and him resorting to ‘Singing his frightened self to sleep’. Therefore, it seems like his purpose is to take on the role of a mother to those who read his works and are going through the same struggles and to bring them ‘ease’. This is further proven by the epigram which brings a twist where the poetry he read was initially addressed to himself but later is intended for him to bring comfort and hope to his readers. This connects to his other poem ‘Storm’ where he reconciles with his emotions and realizes that they’re not wrong and in doing so, the poem is able to bring relief and comfort to others who would have read this poem in such a dangerous time for gay people. His experience is able to guide and soothe