Happy Are Men Who Yet Before They

I Am Not Concerned With Poetry. My Subject Is War, And The Pity Of War. The Poetry Is In The Pity. Yet These Elegies Are To This Generation In No Sense Conciliatory. They May Be To The Next. All A Poet Can Do Today Is Warn. That Is Why The True Poets Must Be Truthful.

The War Affects Me Less Than It Ought. But I Can Do No Service To Anybody By Agitating For News Or Making Dole Over The Slaughter.

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

Was It For This The Clay Grew Tall? O What Made Fatuous Sunbeams Toil To Break Earth's Sleep At All?

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.