Another one of those wretched homework help threads - English literature

[Banzai]

Hi all,

I am currently at high school studying English literature and one of the poems we are looking at is Exposure by Wilfred Owen:

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us...
Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent...
Low, drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient...
Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
But nothing happens.

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,
Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,
Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
What are we doing here?

The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow...
We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.
Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray,
But nothing happens.

Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.
Less deathly than the air that shudders black with snow,
With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew;
We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance,
But nothing happens.

Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces -
We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,
Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,
Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses,
- Is it that we are dying?

Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing th sunk fires, glozed*
With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;
For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;
Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed, -
We turn back to our dying.

Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;
Nor ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.
For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;
Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,
For love of God seems dying.

To-night, this frost will fasten on this mud and us,
Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.
The burying-party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp,
Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,
But nothing happens.

Could anyone explain to me what the part in bold means? Or even, just what is your impression of it is to mean?

As for the underlined part...does it mean, the soliders are dead so now the mice can have their homes back (as there is no more fighting?) And then when it talks about the doors, as in, the doors of life? Almost as if, they have no choice but to die now?

*glozed - glowing and glazed

Big thanks for any help. (I'm quite desperate - I have to write an essay using that poem and it's due tomorrow. Why I couldn't write it in the half term, I have no idea)

[Kelly]

I get the impression that this is a poem of anticipation? (I could be wrong.) It's winter and the soldiers are waiting in the trenches, because nothing can happen in the cold and snow. He's using a lot of winter imagery. This fact would explain the verse you bolded. He doesn't want spring to come, because spring, which is usually used in poetry to describe times of growth, love, warmth, happiness, etc., is - in reality - a time of death and destruction for the soldiers in the trenches, because it means a renewal of fighting.

The crusted dark-red jewels, I assume, are the embers of a fire, or perhaps fires off in the distance.

I think the mice now have free reign in the no man's land or field after the battle is over. The firing has stopped because of the weather and all he hears are the crickets and the mice have come out now that everything is calm again and the soldiers have gone back to the trenches to wait.

Anyway, I'm not a lit major or anything, so only use it if it makes sense with what you already know about the poem.

Have a nice day,
Kelly

[Thomas Paine]

^ What she said (impressive BTW), and also the last couple sentences of the bold part sounds like a kind of acceptance that this is how they will die. And that they are not terribly disappointed anymore. There is a lot of fatigue involved in freezing, or even nearly freezing to death, not to mention when you are going to have to charge to your death if you survive the harsh weather.

Don't blame ME if you fail your paper though.

And get off of the computer already and do your homework!

[Banzai]

Thanks for all your help

[Kelly]

Let us know how you do.

Have a nice day,
Kelly