I
Happy
are men who yet before they are killed
Can
let their veins run cold.
Whom
no compassion fleers
Or
makes their feet
Sore
on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
The
front line withers,
But
they are troops who fade, not flowers
For
poets’ tearful fooling:
Men,
gaps for filling:
Losses,
who might have fought
Longer;
but no one bothers.
II
And
some cease feeling
Even
themselves or for themselves.
Dullness
best solves
The
tease and doubt of shelling,
And
Chance’s strange arithmetic
Comes
simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.
They
keep no check on armies’ decimation.
III
Happy
are these who lose imagination:
They
have enough to carry with ammunition.
Their
spirit drags no pack.
Their
old wounds, save with cold, can not more ache.
Having
seen all things red,
Their
eyes are rid
Of
the hurt of the colour of blood forever.
And
terror’s first constriction over,
Their
hearts remain small-drawn.
Their
senses in some scorching cautery of battle
Now
long since ironed,
Can
laugh among the dying, unconcerned.
IV
Happy
the soldier home, with not a notion
How
somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,
And
many sighs are drained.
Happy
the lad whose mind was never trained:
His
days are worth forgetting more than not.
He
sings along the march
Which
we march taciturn, because of dusk,
The
long, forlorn, relentless trend
From
larger day to huger night.
V
We
wise, who with a thought besmirch
Blood
over all our soul,
How
should we see our task
But
through his blunt and lashless eyes?
Alive,
he is not vital overmuch;
Dying,
not mortal overmuch;
Nor
sad, nor proud,
Nor
curious at all.
He
cannot tell
Old
men’s placidity from his.
VI
But
cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,
That
they should be as stones;
Wretched
are they, and mean
With
paucity that never was simplicity.
By
choice they made themselves immune
To
pity and whatever moans in man
Before
the last sea and the hapless stars;
Whatever
mourns when many leave these shores;
Whatever
shares
The
eternal reciprocity of tears.