<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="" class="head">War, The Liberator<br xmlns:exist="http://exist.sourceforge.net/NS/exist" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"/> (TO THE AUTHORESS OF "NON-COMBATANTS")</h1><div class="stanza"><p class="line">SURELY War is vile to you, you who can but know of it,</p><p class="line">Broken men and broken hearts, and boys too young to die,</p><p class="line">You that never knew its joy, never felt the glow of it,</p><p class="line">Valour and the pride of men, soaring to the sky.</p><p class="line">Death's a fearful thing to you, terrible in suddenness,</p><p class="line">Lips that will not laugh again, tongues that will not sing,</p><p class="line">You that have not ever seen their sudden life of happiness,</p><p class="line">The moment they looked down on death, a cowed and beaten thing.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Say what life would theirs have been, that it should make you weep for them,</p><p class="line">A small grey world imprisoning the wings of their desire?</p><p class="line">Happier than they could tell who knew not life would keep for them</p><p class="line">Fragments of the high Romance, the old Heroic fire.</p><p class="line">All they dreamed of childishly, bravery and fame for them,</p><p class="line">Charges at the cannon's mouth, enemies they slew,</p><p class="line">Bright across the waking world their romances came for them,</p><p class="line">Is not life a little price when our dreams come true?</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">All the terrors of the night, doubts and thoughts tormenting us</p><p class="line">Boy-minds painting quiveringly the awful face of fear.</p><p class="line">These are gone for ever now, truth is come contenting us,</p><p class="line">Night with all its tricks is gone and our eyes are clear.</p><p class="line">Now in all the time to come, memory will cover us,</p><p class="line">Trenches that we did not lose, charges that we made,</p><p class="line">Since a voice, when first we heard shells go shrilling over us,</p><p class="line">Said within us, " This is Death--and I am not afraid! "</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Since we felt our spirits tower, smiling and contemptuous,</p><p class="line">O'er the little frightened things, running to and fro,</p><p class="line">Looked on Death and saw a slave blustering and presumptuous,</p><p class="line">Daring vainly still to bring Man his master low.</p><p class="line">Though we knew that at the last, he would have his lust of us,</p><p class="line">Carelessly we braved his might, felt and knew not why</p><p class="line">Something stronger than ourselves, moving in the dust of us,</p><p class="line">Something in the Soul of Man still too great to die.</p></div></body></html> · Great War