My Subject Is War, And The Pity

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.

Above All I Am Not Concerned With Poetry. My Subject Is War, And The Pity Of War. The Poetry Is In The Pity.

I Am Only Conscious Of Any Satisfaction In Scientific Reading Or Thinking When It Rounds Off Into A Poetical Generality And Vagueness.

The Old Happiness Is Unreturning. Boy's Griefs Are Not So Grievous As Youth's Yearning. Boys Have No Sadness Sadder Than Our Hope.

Futility Move Him Into The Sun - Gently Its Touch Awoke Him Once, At Home, Whispering Of Fields Unsown. Always It Woke Him, Even In France, Until This Morning And This Snow. If Anything Might Rouse Him Now The Kind Old Sun Will Know. Think How It Wakes The Seeds, - Woke, Once, The Clays Of A Cold Star. Are Limbs, So Dear-achieved, Are Sides, Full-nerved -still Warm -too Hard To Stir? Was It For This The Clay Grew Tall? -o What Made Fatuous Sunbeams Toil To Break Earth's Sleep At All?