Arms and the Boy Arms and the Boy "Arms and the Boy" is a poem by Wilfred Owen. Like Owen's other famous poems, it deals with the atrocities of World War I; in it, he portrays the loss of innocence of a child in the midst of war. Thousands like the boy are drawn into the battlefield, to the tormenting visitations of war. <poem>"Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood"</poem> It seems a wonder that a boy familiar with sticks and stones holds bayonets in the same hands and learns the coldness of death.
The Barefoot Boy boots and shoes and long-tailed and broad-tailed coats — and revelled again in the days and delights of jacket-hood, torn hat-hood and barefoot-hood." The Barefoot Boy "The Barefoot Boy" is a poem written by American Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. The poem was first published in "The Little Pilgrim" in January 1855. The poem is about a barefoot boy who is both innocent and connected to nature. Nature and innocence are both compared to the world of adults, in which adults have to try to stand out in endless struggles to stand out. The boy is barefoot because the shoes