Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
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I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
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Trudging by Corbie Ridge one winter's night,
(Unless old hearsay memories tricked his sight)
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Groping along the tunnel, step by step,
He winked his prying torch with patching glare
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If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
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His wet white face and miserable eyes
Brought nurses to him more than groans and sighs:
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In me, past, present, future meet
To hold long chiding conference.
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We’d gained our first objective hours before
While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,
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Lost in the swamp and welter of the pit,
He flounders off the duck-boards; only he knows
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You've heard me, scornful, harsh, and discontented,
Mocking and loathing War: you've asked me why
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Adam, a brown old vulture in the rain,
Shivered below his wind-whipped olive-trees;
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He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped
Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;
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All night the flares go up; the Dragon sings
And beats upon the dark with furious wings;
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AT dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun
In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun,
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Darkness: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep;
It was past twelve on a mid-winter night,
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I Stood with the Dead, so forsaken and still:
When dawn was grey I stood with the Dead.
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Evening was in the wood, louring with storm.
A time of drought had sucked the weedy pool
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Four days the earth was rent and torn
By bursting steel,
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Tossed on the glittering air they soar and skim,
Whose voices make the emptiness of light
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When you are standing at your hero’s grave,
Or near some homeless village where he died,
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Return to greet me, colours that were my joy,
Not in the woeful crimson of men slain,
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(To Robert Graves) I
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‘FALL in! Now get a move on.’ (Curse the rain.)
We splash away along the straggling village,
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‘Pass it along, the wiring party’s going out’—
And yawning sentries mumble, ‘Wirers going out.’
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Hullo! here’s my platoon, the lot I had last year.
‘The war’ll be over soon.’
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Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake,
Out in the trench with three hours’ watch to take,
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Splashing along the boggy woods all day,
And over brambled hedge and holding clay,
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Well, how are things in Heaven? I wish you’d say,
Because I’d like to know that you’re all right.
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He's got a Blighty wound. He’s safe; and then
War’s fine and bold and bright.
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When I’m asleep, dreaming and lulled and warm,—
They come, the homeless ones, the noiseless dead.
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