Owen, too, depends on the conceptualization of life as a possession in the following lines:
But they who love the greater love Lay down their life; they do not hate.
(“At a Calvary Near The Ancre,” n.d.)
Whereas the church exports the government’s hatred of the Germans to the soldiers on the battlefield and exhorts them to turn this hatred into a fire burning their enemies, Owen beseeches them to renounce hatred and replace it with love: love of life, their comrades, and their motherland. The expression “Lay down their life,” which is a metaphorical realization of the conceptual metaphor LIFE IS A POSSESSION, introduces life as a property the soldiers willingly and readily give to their country. Owen’s message, states Stallworthy (1994,