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

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

The old happiness is unreturning. Boy's griefs are not so grievous as youth's yearning. Boys have no sadness sadder than our hope.

Children are not meant to be studied, but enjoyed. Only by studying to be pleased do we understand them.

Never fear: Thank Home, and Poetry, and the Force behind both.

Those who, like the beasts, have no such Hope, pass their old age shrouded with an inward gloom.

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.