In Wilfred Owen’s “Greater Love”, the poet places patriotic love or love for one’s country men on a pedestal as compared to romantic love. Wilfred Owen thus negates the innumerable love poems that have been immortalized by the past poets. He talks of it as a greater love as it is higher in degree being platonic, selfless and based on altruistic sacrifice. Physical love in such a stance is reduced to naught as the poet opines:”Red lips are not so red.” The kindness of the wooer and wooed both holds an element on selfishness in contrast to the one who dies out of love for his country. ‘Stead’ is the place of a person or thing as occupied by a successor or substitute.As the stained stones of the dead are kissed by the English, the poet gets disillusioned as he foresees his successors being blinded by worldly concerns as opposed to their duty to countrymen. Romantic Love is portrayed as a woman who has lost her ability to seduce and lure.

The profession of the soldier is one where the soldiers are rendered immune by the greatest teacher-Experience. The slender lover trembles exquisitely in passion; but the imagery is eclipsed in comparison to the trembling limbs of the soldier skewed by hardships in the battlefield. Such a context is above emotions, that even God does not seem to care. Wilfred Owen utilizes a hyperbole here. The poet may also imply that their higher love goes unnoticed by God which is why it eventually succumbs to ‘death’s extreme decrepitude.’ There is an existentialist element here as the poet echoes that their greater love had ultimately the same destination of decrepitude.

The beloved voice that sings softly matters not as much as the wind murmuring through the loft. Unnatural noises gain precedence over human voices in the face of death. Her voice holds no individuality in comparison to those who have created their own identity with sacrifice. None hear their voices now as earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed. Like a mother who does not want to her kids to suffer any more, the Earth administers and practises euthanasia.

As theirs whom none now hear

The poet addresses romantic love and opines that it was never so hot or passionate as the patriotic fervor most men embodied. It was never large or magnanimous. Your hearts were never full or complete; for being complete is a matter of perception. Only the one completely satisfied or fulfilled is complete. The soldier in such a context is fulfilled if not successful in accordance to the worldly definition. He reprimands the society that placed romantic love on a pedestal and failed to comprehend the divine sacrifice of the solder in the face of gruesomeness. Though your hands are pale, pale are those who trail your cross through flame and hail. The soldiers who make your life conducive to living despite great extremes: ’flame and hail’. The symbol of the cross brings in contrast the paradigmatic suffering of Jesus Christ. You may cry; but your crying may fail to move and touch. For their world is beyond and above worldly passion and earthly emotion:

Heart, you were never hot,
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.

©Rukhaya MK 2010

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