Explore "The Send-Off" by Wilfred Owen on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way / To the siding-shed, / And lined the train with faces grimly gay.
Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray / As men's are, dead.
Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp / Stood staring hard, / Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp / Winked to the guard.
So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
They were not ours: / We never heard to which front these were sent.
Nor there if they yet mock what women meant / Who gave them flowers.
Shall they return to beatings of great bells / In wild trainloads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells, / May creep back, silent, to still village wells / Up half-known roads.