All The Poet Can Do Today Is

The Centuries Will Burn Rich Loads With Which We Groaned, Whose Warmth Shall Lull Their Dreaming Lids, While Songs Are Crooned: But They Will Not Dream Of Us Poor Lads, Left In The Ground.

If In Some Smothering Dreams You Too Could Pace Behind The Wagon That We Flung Him In, And Watch The White Eyes Writhing In His Face, His Hanging Face, Like A Devil's Sick Of Sin; If You Could Hear, At Every Jolt, The Blood Come Gargling From The Froth-corrupted Lungs, Obscene As Cancer, Bitter As The Cud Of Vile, Incurable Sores On Innocent Tongues,-- My Friend, You Would Not Tell With Such High Zest To Children Ardent For Some Desperate Glory, The Old Lie: Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori.

This Book Is Not About Heroes. English Poetry Is Not Yet Fit To Speak Of Them. Nor Is It About Deeds, Or Lands, Nor Anything About Glory, Honour, Might, Majesty, Dominion, Or Power, Except War. Above All I Am Not Concerned With Poetry. My Subject Is War, And The Pity Of War. The Poetry Is In The Pity.

The Pallor Of Girls' Brows Shall Be Their Pall; Their Flowers The Tenderness Of Patient Minds, And Each Slow Dusk A Drawing-down Of Blinds.

I Was A Boy When I First Realized That The Fullest Life Liveable Was A Poet's