Greater Love

“Greater Love” is written in a lyrical ballad form, with each of the stanzas following the rhyme scheme A-A-B-B-B-A. This rhyme scheme applies even to the first stanza with its trio of “wooer/pure/lure”, even though the pairing of “wooer” (Line 3) and “pure” (Line 4) is technically more of a near-rhyme, and therefore not as immediately obvious in its conformity to the general form and meter of the poem.

Owen’s use of a traditional ballad form—a genre frequently associated with expressions of love and other personal feelings—is interesting because the poem creates an uneasy link between the experiences of love and war, subjects that often feature heavily in a different poetic form, the epic, which glorifies feats of traditional manliness. By using the ballad, Owen strips wartime exploits of their usual epic grandeur, preferring to present them in a more direct, plain manner that demystifies them and presents wartime injury and loss in a far starker light. Owen’s use of a poetic form traditionally linked to love poetry also reflects the poem’s thematic preoccupation with the ways in which love and