‘Unto what pinnacles of desperate heights’
Item
Title
‘Unto what pinnacles of desperate heights’
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Creator
Owen, Wilfred (1893-1918)
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Abstract
Unto what pinnacles of desperate heights
Do good men climb to seize their good!
What abnegation to all mortal joys,
What vast abstraction from the world is theirs!
O what insane abuses, desperate pangs,
Annihilations of the Self, soul-suicides,
They wreak upon themselves to purchase---God!
A God to guide through these poor temporal days
Their comings, goings, workings of the heart,
Obsess, indeed, their natures utterly;
Meanwhile preparing, as in recompense,
Mansions celestial for their timeless bliss.
And to what end this Holiness; this God
That arrogates their intellect and soul?
To none! Their offered lives are not so grand,
So active, or so sweet as many a one's
That is undedicate, being reason-swayed;
And their sole mission is to drag, entice
And push mankind to those same cloudy crags
Where they first breathed the madness-giving air
That made them feel as angels, that are less than men.
Do good men climb to seize their good!
What abnegation to all mortal joys,
What vast abstraction from the world is theirs!
O what insane abuses, desperate pangs,
Annihilations of the Self, soul-suicides,
They wreak upon themselves to purchase---God!
A God to guide through these poor temporal days
Their comings, goings, workings of the heart,
Obsess, indeed, their natures utterly;
Meanwhile preparing, as in recompense,
Mansions celestial for their timeless bliss.
And to what end this Holiness; this God
That arrogates their intellect and soul?
To none! Their offered lives are not so grand,
So active, or so sweet as many a one's
That is undedicate, being reason-swayed;
And their sole mission is to drag, entice
And push mankind to those same cloudy crags
Where they first breathed the madness-giving air
That made them feel as angels, that are less than men.
Date
1912-11-06
Source
The Complete Poems and Fragments of Wilfred Owen edited by Jon Stallworthy first published by Chatto & Windus, 1983.
(#35, CPF vol. 1, p. 60, vol. 2, p. 209)
OEF 185
Type
Poem
