Anthem+for+Doomed+Youth--notes

=Annotations =

**passing-bells:** a bell tolled after someone's death to announce the death to the world

**patter out:** rapidly speak

**orisons:** prayers, here funeral prayers

**mockeries:** ceremonies which are insults. Here Owen seems to be suggesting that the Christian religion, with its loving God, can have nothing to do with the deaths of so many thousands of men

**demented:** raving mad

**bugles:** a bugle is played at military funerals (sounding the last post)

**shires:** English counties and countryside from which so many of the soldiers came

**candles:** church candles, or the candles lit in the room where a body lies in a coffin

**pallor:** paleness

**dusk:** has a symbolic significance here

**drawing-down of blinds:** normally a preparation for night, but also, here, the tradition of drawing the blinds in a room where a dead person lies, as a sign to the world and as a mark of respect. The coming of night is like the drawing down of blinds.

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