My Subject Is War, And The Pity

For By My Glee Might Many Men Have Laughed, And Of My Weeping May Something Have Been Left, Which Must Die Now.

Dead Men May Envy Living Mites In Cheese, Or Good Germs Even. Microbes Have Their Joys, And Subdivide, And Never Come To Death.

The Young Soldier It Is Not Death Without Hereafter To One In Dearth Of Life And Its Laughter, Nor The Sweet Murder Dealt Slow And Even Unto The Martyr Smiling At Heaven: It Is The Smile Faint As A (waning) Myth, Faint, And Exceeding Small On A Boy's Murdered Mouth.

And By His Smile, I Knew That Sullen Hall, By His Dead Smile I Knew We Stood In Hell.

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.