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.…