Skip to content
Linespedia

Arms and the Boy

Topics: classic

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade         How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;         Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;         And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.         Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads         Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.         Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,         Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.         For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.         There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;         And God will grow no talons at his heels,         Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.

AI analysis available. Enable JavaScript to interact.

About this line

"Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade..."

Exploring the themes of classic, Wilfred Edward Salter Owen delivers a powerful performance in "Arms and the Boy"... ### Why We Love This Line At Linespedia, we believe that poetry is the ultimate sanctuary for the soul...

Classified Tags

Related lines

"I mind as 'ow the night afore that show         Us five got talking,--we was in the know,         "Over the top to-morrer; boys, we're for i"

"Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned         Yesterday's Mail; the casualties (typed small)         And (large) Vast Booty from"

"(Another version of "A Terre".)              To Siegfried Sassoon         My arms have mutinied against me--brutes!         My fing"

"Earth's wheels run oiled with blood.    Forget we that.              Let us lie down and dig ourselves in thought.              Beauty"

"Here morning in the ploughman's songs is met     Ere yet one footstep shows in all the sky,     And twilight in the east, a doubt as yet,     S"

"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

Continue Reading

"I mind as 'ow the night afore that show         Us..."

Weekly Poetic Insight

Join our literary Sanctuary

Get the most inspiring lines, poetic analysis, and secret shayaris delivered to your inbox every Sunday.