Poem pays tribute to slain soldiers

Wilfred Owen's poem Anthem for Doomed Youth is about the horrors of the first world war (1914-1918). It was the first 'modern' war, when much of the machinery that we now take for granted - machine guns, bombs and tanks among others - were used in a sustained way for the first time. Owen fought as a soldier and officer in the war, until he was killed at the age of 27 a week before the conflict ended in 1918. This is a powerful poem because we know that Owen experienced the horrors of war for himself.

An anthem is a song or hymn of celebration, frequently sung in church, and this is a theme that runs throughout the poem. It is also written in the form of a sonnet. This is a poem of 14 lines, each line with 10 (and occasionally 11) syllables. The tone is regular, with five stressed and five unstressed beats in each line. This kind of line is known as an iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme follows a regular pattern: ababcdcdeffegg.

A sonnet was traditionally a love poem, although with the passage of time poets used the form for all kinds of subjects. In this case, the poem both celebrates and mourns the loss of loved ones. The poet conjures up the horrors of war, and the way that those left behind at home grieve for their loved ones.

A 'passing-bell' is traditionally rung at church just before a funeral - to mark the passing of a life. The poet uses a simile to describe the way the soldiers die: 'as cattle'. This suggests a large number of fatalities, and the way that soldiers are herded to their deaths just as cattle are rounded up by a farmer. The officers who command these men have no more feeling for the soldiers than a farmer does for his cattle.

There are no churches on a battlefield, no opportunities for a proper funeral for the men who die fighting for their country. There is gunfire instead of bells, and the poet uses a combination of consonance and alliteration to create the sound of gunfire:

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle