Red Lips Are Not So Red – Review
Wilfred Owen
Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!
Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed ,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce Love they bear
Cramps them in death’s extreme decrepitude.
Your voice sings not so soft, —
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft, —
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.
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.
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Analysis
Wilfred Owen’s “Red Lips Are Not So Red” challenges conventional ideas of love and beauty by placing them against the brutal realities of war. While the title suggests a romantic poem, it quickly becomes apparent that Owen is not speaking to a lover but to the memory of the soldiers he fought with, men who have been torn apart by the violence of war. The poem is less about idealized love and more about the deep grief Owen feels over his fallen comrades—brothers who died before they could fully live.
From the first line, Owen contrasts romantic symbols with the harsh, bloody reality of war. “Red lips are not so red / As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.” The “red lips” of love are no match for the bloodstains of soldiers who’ve died in battle. In this comparison, Owen undermines the conventional associations of red lips with desire, affection, or passion, replacing them with the grim reality of death. This initial image sets the tone of the poem, as Owen reflects on how war turns traditional symbols of love into something hollow and distant.
As the poem unfolds, Owen continues to dismantle the idea of romantic love. The speaker addresses “Love,” but the affection being described isn’t the tender feelings of a lover—it’s the raw, painful connection between soldiers, forged in the suffering of war. The “slender attitude” of a lover is trivial compared to the grotesque imagery of soldiers’ “knife-skewed limbs,” their bodies twisted and broken by the violence of battle. What might have once been romantic or delicate in a lover’s form is replaced by the dehumanizing violence of war. Owen paints a picture of how love becomes distorted in the trenches, unable to protect anyone from the destruction around them.
The poem’s imagery of the “pitiable mouths” of soldiers, whose voices have been silenced by death, deepens this contrast between idealized love and the harsh realities of war. The once-sweet voice of a lover, “gentle and evening clear,” seems irrelevant when compared to the soldiers who now lie dead, their mouths “stopped.” Where once there might have been laughter, conversation, or tenderness, there is now only silence. The soldiers’ love, in Owen’s eyes, is more pure and painful than anything a lover could understand. Yet, it’s a love that leads to death, underscoring the futility of romantic love in the face of such violence.
The final stanza shifts the focus to the heart, another symbol of love, and here Owen’s grief becomes even clearer. His heart, he admits, is “not hot, / Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot.” The hearts of soldiers, filled with courage and love for one another, are contrasted with the speaker’s own heart, which feels pale and detached. The soldiers’ hearts, “made great with shot,” are filled with a fierce love—one that leads them to sacrifice their lives for each other. Owen’s own heart, unable to match the intensity of the soldiers’ devotion, feels inadequate in comparison.
In the end, Owen realizes that even though he weeps for his fallen comrades, he can never “touch them.” Their death has severed the connection between them, and his grief is helpless. The distance between the living and the dead feels insurmountable, and the love Owen feels for them—love born of shared hardship and sacrifice—is a kind of love that can never be reciprocated or fully realized.
Through “Red Lips Are Not So Red,” Owen mourns the loss of the soldiers and the bond they shared, a bond that transcended the conventional ideas of love. His grief is deepened by the realization that the kind of love he once understood—romantic and tender—has been replaced by something darker, a love that is defined by suffering and death. The poem forces us to confront how war strips away everything human, even the most cherished emotions, replacing them with the brutal realities of violence and loss. For Owen, the love he feels for his fallen comrades is a love that leads only to death, a love that can never return to the innocence of affection. It is a love bound by suffering, a connection that transcends conventional notions of love but is forever lost to the horrors of war.
Commentary on Reintegration
The transition that Wilfred Owen and his comrades would have faced when returning to civilian life after World War I was not only a physical adjustment but also a profound emotional rupture. In his poetry, such as “Red Lips Are Not So Red,” Owen depicts the intense, selfless love forged in the trenches—a bond built on shared suffering and the ever-present threat of death. This “love,” though not romantic, transcended ordinary affection and became a defining part of the soldiers’ identities. It was a love born from the brutal realities of war, where comrades relied on each other for survival in ways that no civilian relationship could replicate.
For Owen, the reintegration into civilian society would have felt alienating, as the relationships he had once known—whether romantic, familial, or social—would seem trivial in comparison. The intense connections formed during the war were forged in a context of shared trauma, and these bonds couldn’t be transferred to a world that had moved on. Romantic love, which Owen criticizes as “pale” and “insufficient,” felt irrelevant when compared to the fierce, sacrificial loyalty between soldiers. For survivors, the challenge was not just adjusting to new routines, but dealing with the emotional chasm left by relationships that no longer fit the world they returned to.
This sense of disconnection is often misunderstood, and seldom discussed, yet it profoundly affects every generation of soldiers coming home from war. Whether ancient or modern, the emotional void left by the intense bonds of battle is difficult to bridge. The love that soldiers experience in combat is unlike anything in civilian life, and attempting to return to “normal” relationships can feel like a betrayal of the depth and urgency of that bond. For many, the reintegration process is not just about finding a new place in society, but about mourning the loss of a world that no longer exists for them.
Owen’s repeated return to the battlefield, despite knowing the futility of the war, suggests that these bonds were stronger than anything civilian life could offer. His death in 1918 underscores the tragedy of a man caught between two worlds—the intense, brotherly loyalty of war and a civilian world that had no room for it. The tragedy is that the love formed in battle, though deeply real, could not be sustained in peace. For Owen and many others, reintegration into society was a struggle not just with the physical realities of war, but with the emotional void left by the bonds they could never replace.
For many soldiers, the bonds of war become stronger and more meaningful than anything civilian life can offer. The love and loyalty between comrades in arms, though genuine and life-affirming, can’t survive in peace. This sense of loss, and the struggle to reintegrate, is a challenge that every generation of soldiers faces, often in silence, as they find themselves unable to fully return to a world that has left them behind. Or in many ways, they have left behind.
Photo by National Library of Scotland on Unsplash
