The purpose of the article is to analyse the evolution of Wilfred Owen’s poetry; to compare Owen’s early works, written before his firsthand experience of combat and inspired by Romantic and, subsequently, Decadent poetry, with compositions written after his traumatic experiences on the battlefield; to document the clash, or rather distinctive fusion, of his growing aesthetic sensitivity and Romantic appreciation of nature with the horrifying experiences of trench warfare. The article concludes with an analysis of the poem Futility, which may be viewed as Owen’s final literary testament; a simultaneously hopeful and bleak meditation on the nature of human existence.