In “On My Songs,” Wilfred Owen offers us an intellectual vision of the emotion of loneliness through the eyes of a young man, just thrown into the world from the arms of his loving mother. Owen also tells us of his idolatry of Romantic poets and the power poetry has to cure people of their misery. Owen presents these ideas in a variety of ways, such as exploring diction, using sound and linguistic devices, manipulating structure, and using symbolism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayIn Shakespeare's first quatrain, Owen talks about how these great poets are able to cure his sadness "as if they knew my pain." By capitalizing "Poets" in line 1, he shows how much he thinks highly of these men, and by using the word "invisible" he reveals to readers that even though these poets are not here, they are still able to "ease" The desperation of Owen, like they're almost spiritual. The word “fashioned” conjures images of the immense skill needed to create such poems, and shows once again how much Owen idolized these poets – particularly Romantic ones like Keats. The repetition of the word "many" in "many and many a time" can be physically interpreted as the countless times Owen has read through the work of these poets, so much so that they are now like a perpetual loop in his mind, just like a Bible verse to a vicar. In the second quatrain, Owen begins to use the first person as he talks about how sometimes even these great works of art are not enough to quell his pain. Contrasting her “silent tears” with “language as sweet as sobs” creates an ironic and oxymoronic image of how her inarticulate tears are usually cured by this beautiful language. “Sweet as sobs” is also an oxymoron in that it contrasts something happy with something that is usually darker. When Owen talks about “thought treasures,” he means that these poems are objects to be treasured and kept forever. The words “nothing for me” and the hollow, echoing sound they contain continue to show the deep feeling of loss he feels when these works of art have no effect on him. The break between lines 6 and 7 further reiterates this idea of ​​desertion and abandonment. By repeating the word “pulse” and personifying the poems, Owen once again demonstrates the pain he feels when these lines, which are usually so intertwined with his soul, are completely out of sync with his heartbeat. The caesura and end of line 8 further illustrate the feeling of detachment and dislocation that Owen can sometimes feel. After line 8 there is a time, and Owen starts talking about his "strange reveries" instead. It speaks of the “low humming of a motherless child, in the darkness” – the “oo” sounds serve to create an eerie, dark atmosphere while the “motherless child” is perhaps a manifestation of his greatest fear. Owen was very close to his mother, and so the symbol of a “motherless child” implies that there would be no love or sympathy in this child's life, and indeed this child would have to “sing himself to sleep in fear”. This child serves as an object onto which Owen is able to project his feelings as he lies, locked in the "sick room" that is the vicarage of Dunsden. In line 13, of "Dreading the Dark", Owen personifies the darkness into a symbol of undefined fear - as everyone experiences a different "Dark". The following, "you dare not enlighten" shows Owen using archaic language which further promotes the childhood fears he harbors.