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.
John Smith (English poet) John Smith (English poet) John Smith (1662–1717) was an English poet and playwright. He was son of John Smith of Barton, Gloucestershire, and in 1676 became a chorister of Magdalen College, Oxford, matriculating on 10 July 1679. He graduated B.A. in 1683, M.A. in 1686; in 1682 he became a clerk of the college, in 1689 usher of the college school. Smith died at Oxford on 16 July 1717, and was buried in the college chape Smith was the author of: It is generally thought that Smith was the author of "Win her and take her, or Old Fools will