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; 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.
Owen juxtaposes battlefield slaughter with the rituals of a church funeral—and finds the latter absent. The opening question frames soldiers as cattle, stripped of ceremony. Gunfire replaces church bells; shells become demented choirs.
In the sestet, Owen relocates mourning to the home front. Candles glow in boys’ eyes, not on altars. The only pall is the pallor of girls waiting at home. War’s violence invades domestic space, turning everyday gestures into elegies.
The poem ends with dusk lowering like a blind, a quiet metaphor that underscores how grief seeps into ordinary evenings. Owen indicts the machinery of war by insisting on the sacredness of individual lives it consumes.
Interpretation generated with assistance from Claude.