I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers.

His wet white face and miserable eyesBrought nurses to him more than groans and sighs:But hoarse and low and rapid rose and fellHis troubled voice: he did the business well.(First verse of Died of Wounds)

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.

I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

But I've grown thoughtful now. And you have lost Your early-morning freshness of surprise At being so utterly mine: you've learned to fear The gloomy, stricken places in my soul, And the occasional ghosts that haunt my gaze.

For it is humanly certain that most of us remember very little of what we have read. To open almost any book a second time is to be reminded that we had forgotten well-nigh everything that the writer told us. Parting from the narrator and his narrative, we retain only a fading impression; and he, as it were, takes the book away from us and tucks it under his arm.

I didn't want to die - not before I'd finished reading The Return of the Native anyhow.