Parable of the Old Men and the Young is a poem by Wilfred Owen, a British soldier and poet who wrote during World War I. The poem is a parable, or a story with a moral lesson, about a group of old men who are discussing the war. They are discussing how the young men of their country are being sent off to fight and die in the war, and they are debating whether or not it is right for them to do so. The old men ultimately decide that it is right, and they send the young men off to fight. The poem ends with the moral lesson that it is better to sacrifice the young than to sacrifice the old. The poem is a powerful statement about the horrors of war and the tragedy of sending young men off to fight and die in a conflict that they may not understand.
By Wilfred Owen · First published 1918 · Genre: Poetry, War Poetry, Modernist Poetry