What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

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

The universal pervasion of ugliness, hideous landscapes, vile noises, foul language...everything. Unnatural, broken, blasted; the distortion of the dead, whose unburiable bodies sit outside the dug outs all day, all night, the most execrable sights on earth. In poetry we call them the most glorious.

The war affects me less than it ought. But I can do no service to anybody by agitating for news or making dole over the slaughter.

Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland.

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.

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels I would go up and wash them from sweet wells, Even with truths that lie too deep for taint. I would have poured my spirit without stint But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.