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Anthem for Doomed Youth is one of the best-known and most popular of Wilfred Owen's poems. It employs the traditional form of a sonnet. Much of the imagery suggests Christian funeral rituals and the poem moves from infernal noise to mournful silence.

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 now for them; no prayers nor bells,...
(Read on, listen.)

Featured February 2007