Owen, Wilfred. "The Parable of the Old Man and the Young".

Summary and Analysis

- a sonnet

- ironically adapts the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac to the modern condition

- retells the whole tale in a self-consciously archaic language: the preparations Abraham makes to offer his eldest son Isaac, the bounds Abraham uses to force Isaac to follow him, and the appearance of the angel telling Abraham to sacrifice the ram caught in a bush

- the final couplet: Abraham does not obey the words of the angel and slays his son together with "half the seed of Europe"