Mute in that golden silence hung with green,Come down from heaven and bring me in your eyesRemembrance of all beauty that has been,And stillness from the pools of Paradise.
I didn’t want to die – not before I’d finished reading The Return of the Native anyhow.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you’ll never know The hell where youth and laughter go.” “The War Poems
I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defense and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.
The fact is that five years ago I was, as near as possible, a different person to what I am tonight. I, as I am now, didn’t exist at all. Will the same thing happen in the next five years? I hope so.
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.
I did not dread the dark winter as people do when they have lost their youth and live alone in some great city.
All the sanguine guesswork of youth is there, and the silliness; all the novelty of being alive and impressed by the urgency of tremendous trivialities.
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.
Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land, drawing no dividend from time’s tomorrows.