"I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears; And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts; And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts; And rusted every bayonet with His tears.

It was written in October 1917 in Craiglockhart, a suburb in the south-west of Edinburgh (Scotland), while the author was recovering from shell shock in the trenches, inflicted during World War I.

The original manuscript can now be found in The English Faculty Library at the University of Oxford (St. Cross Building, Manor Road OX2 6NN).

[3] The main theme of Wilfred Owen’s Soldier's Dream is the pity of war that he communicates through the image of Jesus smiling kindly.

One of the key elements of Owen's conception of poetry is the duty of the poet of being truthful, realistic and inspired by experiences.

In the preface of Poems, published posthumously, he wrote: "My subject is war, and the pity of war./ The Poetry is in the pity./ Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory.

This leads the audience to identify the protagonist with the author, a hypothesis strengthened by the fact that Owen himself was a soldier and that he shared his own dreams with the reader in other works (for instance in his poems Strange Meeting, Exposure and Dulce et Decorum est).

The pararhyme of 'Theirs', ‘gears’, ‘tears’ and ‘repairs’ combines the two quatrains together and puts 'Theirs' (take note of the capital letter) at the heart of the poem.

The former describes the daily experience of soldiers on the front with realistic and shocking images and language (an excellent example is given by Owen's poem Dulce et Decorum est), in order to show how brutal and meaningless war really is; the latter uses a very bombastic and artificial poetry, intending to present war as a noble affair.