If I Have To Be A Soldier

The Old Lie:dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori.

Futility Move Him Into The Sun - Gently Its Touch Awoke Him Once, At Home, Whispering Of Fields Unsown. Always It Woke Him, Even In France, Until This Morning And This Snow. If Anything Might Rouse Him Now The Kind Old Sun Will Know. Think How It Wakes The Seeds, - Woke, Once, The Clays Of A Cold Star. Are Limbs, So Dear-achieved, Are Sides, Full-nerved -still Warm -too Hard To Stir? Was It For This The Clay Grew Tall? -o What Made Fatuous Sunbeams Toil To Break Earth's Sleep At All?

And Some Cease Feeling Even Themselves Or For Themselves. Dullness Best Solves The Tease And Doubt Of Shelling

Courage Was Mine, And I Had Mystery, Wisdom Was Mine, And I Had Mastery: To Miss The March Of This Retreating World Into Vain Citadels That Are Not Walled.

Those Who, Like The Beasts, Have No Such Hope, Pass Their Old Age Shrouded With An Inward Gloom.