poetry texts, poem archive at plagiarist.com

There are two drafts of this poem. 'Man' is used in one and 'men' is used in the other. See the original 'Collected Poems' printed in 1920 and then in the 30's and 70's

the poem is nearly entirely taken from the bible, owen was brought up with strict evangelical beliefs which he did break away from as he got older but he still refered from them from time to time as you see in his poetry. in this poem abram represents the army, isaac represents the army and the ram represents pride, in the bible abram killed the ram but in this poem he kills his son, he sacrifises his son (the army)for his pride. he's trying to say that the war could have been avoided.