Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.

Courage was mine, and I had mystery, Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery: To miss the march of this retreating world Into vain citadels that are not walled.

I find purer philosophy in a Poem than in a Conclusion of Geometry, a chemical analysis, or a physical law

Flying is the only active profession I could ever continue with enthusiasm after the War.

I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense conciliatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.

Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland.

My subject is war, and the pity of war.