Insensibility. One. Happier men, who have 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 fulfilling. Losses who might have fought longer, but no
one bothers. Two. 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 armour's decimation. Three.
Happier those who lose imagination. They have enough to carry with ammunition. Their spirit
drags no pack. Their old wounds, save with cold, cannot 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 sense is in some scorching cautery of
battle, now long since ironed, can laugh among the dying, unconcerned. Four. Happy the soldier
home, with not a notion, how somewhere, every dawn, some men attack, and many sighs are
drained. Happy the lads whose mind was never trained, his days are worth forgetting more
than not. He sings along the march, which we march, tack -term, because of dusk. The
long, forlorn, relentless trend, from larger day to hugger night. Five. 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's not vital over much, dying, not mortal over much. Nor
sad, nor proud, nor curious at all, he cannot tell, old men's placidity from his. Six. But
cursed are the lads, 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 mourns in man, before the last sea and the hapless stars.
Whatever mourns when many leave these shores, whatever shares the eternal reciprocity of tears.
