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About

Genius Annotation

This poem describes the speaker’s disenchantment and rebellion against Christianity.

Wilfred Owen’s served two years as lay assistant to the Vicar of Dunsden, but grew disenchanted with evangelical Christianity. Later he taught English at Bordeaux and his interest in religion revived, even drawing him into a sympathetic response to Roman Catholicism. But family and societal influences drew him back, and confirmed his negative feelings.

Anti-Catholic feeling in England at the time of World War One was very strong and, despite his ambivalence about Christianity, Wilfred Owen retained his anti-Catholic prejudices. Even so, he attended some Roman Catholic services in France.

For comparison see Owen’s poem Music.

Structure
The poem is an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet of fourteen lines. The metrical rhythm is iambic pentameter, that is, five iambs or metrical feet per line, each foot comprising one unstressed and one stressed syllable. There is a complex structured rhyme scheme; ABABCBCBDDEEFF

In Petrarchan sonnets the first octave or octet, that is eight lines (here two quatrains), are followed by a volta or ‘turn’ in which the ‘argument’ is reversed or answered. The rhyme scheme in this poem is ABAB CBCB.

The last six lines or sestet form a resolution. In this poem there isn’t an obvious volta, but there is arguably a slight one after line 9, when the speaker starts to reference himself. The rhyme scheme is in the form of couplets, DDEEFF.

For more about sonnets, including Petrarchan sonnets, see Genius annotations on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130.

Maundy Thursday is the day in Christianity commemorating the Last Supper and the washing of feet (the maundy). In this poem, the speaker watches men, women and children arrive at the altar to kiss a cross before he goes to do the same.

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