This famous portrait of Wilfred Owen circa early 1918 and when he was at his most prolific in writing poetry and allowing himself to write without societal constraint, a strength and discipline he had learned in his very detailed studies of the Lives and Collected Works of Keats and Shelley.

This digital artwork loosely frames the young man to whom the Austrian Poet and Writer Rainer Maria Rilke corresponded. Any likeness to the poet is entirely coincidental. © 2024 KTW © 2024 IBM

It was as though a girl came forth
from the marriage of song and lyre,
shining like springtime,
She became inseparable from my own hearing.
She slept in me.

The sensuous opening stanza by Rilke.

It was as though a girl came forth
from the marriage of song and lyre,
shining like springtime,
She became inseparable from my own hearing.
She slept in me.

It was as though a girl came forth
from the marriage of song and lyre,
shining like springtime,
She became inseparable from my own hearing.
She slept in me.

The sensuous opening stanza by Rilke.

Although Wilfred Owen was KIA a week before the end of the First World War, his poetry, evocative, powerful, sensuous, demanding, established him as the leading War Poet of the Great War and of the 20th Century. KTW/IBM

Published in November 2003, Hibberd’s Work is widely regarded as the definitive study of the short life and work of the Poet Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

It was as though a young man, 18 age, came forth from the marriage of song and lyre, shining like springtime. He became inseparable from my own hearing. He slept in me. Everything was in his sleep: The trees I had loved, the distances that had opened, the meadows – all that had ever moved me. He slept the world. Singing god, how have you fashioned him, that he does not long to have once been awake? See: he took form and slept. Where is his death? Will you discover the answer before your song is spent? If I forget him, will he disappear? Create in the style of a beautiful young man as envisaged in the poem by Rainer Maria Rilke

It was as though a young man, 18 age, came forth from the marriage of song and lyre, shining like springtime. He became inseparable from my own hearing. He slept in me. Everything was in his sleep: The trees I had loved, the distances that had opened, the meadows – all that had ever moved me. He slept the world. Singing god, how have you fashioned him, that he does not long to have once been awake? See: he took form and slept. Where is his death? Will you discover the answer before your song is spent? If I forget him, will he disappear? Create in the style of a beautiful young man as envisaged in the poem by Rainer Maria Rilke

It was as though a young man, 18 age, came forth from the marriage of song and lyre, shining like springtime. He became inseparable from my own hearing. He slept in me. Everything was in his sleep: The trees I had loved, the distances that had opened, the meadows – all that had ever moved me. He slept the world. Singing god, how have you fashioned him, that he does not long to have once been awake? See: he took form and slept. Where is his death? Will you discover the answer before your song is spent? If I forget him, will he disappear? Create in the style of a beautiful young man as envisaged in the poem by Rainer Maria Rilke

It was as though a young man, 18 age, came forth from the marriage of song and lyre, shining like springtime. He became inseparable from my own hearing. He slept in me. Everything was in his sleep: The trees I had loved, the distances that had opened, the meadows – all that had ever moved me. He slept the world. Singing god, how have you fashioned him, that he does not long to have once been awake? See: he took form and slept. Where is his death? Will you discover the answer before your song is spent? If I forget him, will he disappear? Create in the style of a beautiful young man as envisaged in the poem by Rainer Maria Rilke

It was as though a young man, 18 age, came forth from the marriage of song and lyre, shining like springtime. He became inseparable from my own hearing. He slept in me. Everything was in his sleep: The trees I had loved, the distances that had opened, the meadows – all that had ever moved me. He slept the world. Singing god, how have you fashioned him, that he does not long to have once been awake? See: he took form and slept. Where is his death? Will you discover the answer before your song is spent? If I forget him, will he disappear? Create in the style of a beautiful young man as envisaged in the poem by Rainer Maria Rilke

It was as though a young man, 18 age, came forth from the marriage of song and lyre, shining like springtime. He became inseparable from my own hearing. He slept in me. Everything was in his sleep: The trees I had loved, the distances that had opened, the meadows – all that had ever moved me. He slept the world. Singing god, how have you fashioned him, that he does not long to have once been awake? See: he took form and slept. Where is his death? Will you discover the answer before your song is spent? If I forget him, will he disappear? Create in the style of a beautiful young man as envisaged in the poem by Rainer Maria Rilke

It was as though a young man, 18 age, came forth from the marriage of song and lyre, shining like springtime. He became inseparable from my own hearing. He slept in me. Everything was in his sleep: The trees I had loved, the distances that had opened, the meadows – all that had ever moved me. He slept the world. Singing god, how have you fashioned him, that he does not long to have once been awake? See: he took form and slept. Where is his death? Will you discover the answer before your song is spent? If I forget him, will he disappear? Create in the style of a beautiful young man as envisaged in the poem by Rainer Maria Rilke