These men are worth your tears. You are not worth their merriment.
Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.
Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout”I see your lights!” But ours had long died out.
You shall not hear their mirth:You shall not come to think them well contentBy any jest of mine. These men are worthYour tears:You are not worth their merriment.
And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan.And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hidIts bruises in the earth, but crawled no further,Showed me its feet, the feet of many men,And the fresh-severed head of it, my head.
As bronze may be much beautified by lying in the dark damp soil, so men who fade in dust of warfare fade fairer, and sorrow blooms their soul.
He’s lost his colour very far from here,Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry
Those who have no hope pass their old age shrouded with an inward gloom.
My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.
Flying is the only active profession I would ever continue with enthusiasm after the War.
After all my years of playing soldiers, and then of reading History, I have almost a mania to be in the East, to see fighting, and to serve.