Arms and the Boy [WILFRED OWEN poem set to music]
Channel: tobydarling
Date: 2016-07-12

Here is a poem by Wilfred Owen which I have set to music. The music is based on a couple of sections from Thomas Tallis's Spem in Alium.

Arms and the Boy


By Wilfred Owen
Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade 
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood; 
Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash; 
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh. 

Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-leads, 
Which long to nuzzle in the hearts of lads, 
Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth 
Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death. 

For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple. 
There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple; 
And God will grow no talons at his heels, 
Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.