Poem Thread

After hearing a beautiful poem by Pvt. Vonk in the mist of battle PFC Milo came up with the perfect idea... To make a thread were we can all share our favourite poems. Everthing from self writen to quotes from others, just remember to give credits.

To start it al off:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

-Dylan Thomas, 1914 - 1953

Comments

  • As a writing student, I can say that Poems are the trickiest and most finicky things to write!
    I personally enjoy The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. It's a great poem!
    I won't paste it here because it's long, but I'll include a link.

  • edited September 2016

    Roses are red.
    Violets are blue.
    This poem makes no sense.
    Microwave.

    -Unknown, 2000-2016

    Body to body, skin to skin.
    When it's stiff, stick it in.
    It goes in dry, comes outwet.
    The longer it's in, the stronger it gets.
    It comes out dripping and starts to sag.

    It's not what you think!
    It's a lipton teabag!

    -Unknown 2000-2016

  • Roses are red my ice cream is Vanilla, Don't shoot Harambe he is just a gorilla!

  • edited September 2016

    Personally, a poem I've grown quite fond of is the following:

    ("If", by Rudyard Kipling)

    If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
    If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
    If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
    Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

    If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
    If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;
    If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
    Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

    If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
    And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
    If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
    And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

    If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
    If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
    If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
    Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

  • I dig
    She digs
    He digs
    It digs
    We dig
    They dig

    Now my poem isn't Nobel worthy nor does it rhyme, but it's very deep

  • edited September 2016

    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
    THE SECOND COMING - Written in 1919 following the horror of WW1

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.
    
    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    
    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
    
  • edited September 2016

    On Death

    Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
    And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
    The transient pleasures as a vision seem,
    And yet we think the greatest pain's to die.
    
    How strange it is that man on earth should roam,
    And lead a life of woe, but not forsake
    His rugged path; nor dare he view alone
    His future doom which is but to awake. 
    

    J. Keats (1795-1821)

  • @Cpl. Kear said:
    On Death

    Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
    And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
    The transient pleasures as a vision seem,
    And yet we think the greatest pain's to die.
    
    How strange it is that man on earth should roam,
    And lead a life of woe, but not forsake
    His rugged path; nor dare he view alone
    His future doom which is but to awake. 
    

    J. Keats (1795-1821)

    Actually got to me, somewhat.

  • I used to write poetry back in high school. Wrote this as a parting gift for an old girlfriend

    She was a flower,
    growing wild, growing free
    A beautiful red rose,
    blooming from a bush of sharp thorns.
    Destined to craft intricate gold jewelry

    Promised a clear mind
    through dense, heavy rain
    She sat back, peering at her own reflection
    in the puddles once forged from pain

    Life is a tragic comedy for those who feel too much.
    Who think too much.

    By morning, she retreated back to her paradise of freedom,
    where there are no boundaries -- no walls
    But only the solitude of her crafted kingdom

    Soft and mad,
    She dances in her ring of fire

    A white flame,
    In a wild, effulgent trance of tears;
    dancing over the graves of her fears

    She leads the trance,
    all-knowing, all-wise,
    in search of reassurance -
    in the face of fear

    A great, rising Sun at dawn,
    lighting the path deep into the quiet, unearthly forest
    Where the wolves howl at a grey, jeweled moon
    Where war is waged in our minds

    Listen to her word,
    her eternal flame of song

    She is the remnant of embers, still aflame
    in the once shadowy realm of our dreams

    She speaks to us,
    cool and sweet
    A voice resonating through a grey fog.
    Clearing our skies;
    clearing our minds

    Life doesn’t always deal out what is expected.
    Just sit back,
    Time is on your side.
    But don’t forget to enjoy the ride.

    1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
      A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
      Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
      Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
      Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
      Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo. LET us go then, you and I,
      When the evening is spread out against the sky
      Like a patient etherized upon a table;
      Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
      The muttering retreats 5
      Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
      And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
      Streets that follow like a tedious argument
      Of insidious intent
      To lead you to an overwhelming question…. 10
      Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
      Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go
      Talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15
      The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
      Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
      Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
      Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
      Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20
      And seeing that it was a soft October night,
      Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be time
      For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
      Rubbing its back upon the window panes; 25
      There will be time, there will be time
      To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
      There will be time to murder and create,
      And time for all the works and days of hands
      That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
      Time for you and time for me,
      And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
      And for a hundred visions and revisions,
      Before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go 35
      Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time
      To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
      Time to turn back and descend the stair,
      With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40
      (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
      My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
      My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
      (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
      Do I dare 45
      Disturb the universe?
      In a minute there is time
      For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all:
      Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50
      I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
      I know the voices dying with a dying fall
      Beneath the music from a farther room.
      So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55
      The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
      And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
      When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
      Then how should I begin
      To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60
      And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all—
      Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
      (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
      Is it perfume from a dress 65
      That makes me so digress?
      Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
      And should I then presume?
      And how should I begin?
      . . . . . . . .
      Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70
      And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
      Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?… I should have been a pair of ragged claws
      Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
      . . . . . . . .
      And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75
      Smoothed by long fingers,
      Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
      Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
      Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
      Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80
      But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
      Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
      I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
      I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
      And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85
      And in short, I was afraid. And would it have been worth it, after all,
      After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
      Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
      Would it have been worth while, 90
      To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
      To have squeezed the universe into a ball
      To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
      To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
      Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 95
      If one, settling a pillow by her head,
      Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
      That is not it, at all.” And would it have been worth it, after all,
      Would it have been worth while, 100
      After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
      After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
      And this, and so much more?—
      It is impossible to say just what I mean!
      But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105
      Would it have been worth while
      If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
      And turning toward the window, should say:
      “That is not it at all,
      That is not what I meant, at all.”
      . . . . . . . .
      110
      No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
      Am an attendant lord, one that will do
      To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
      Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
      Deferential, glad to be of use, 115
      Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
      Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
      At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
      Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old … I grow old … 120
      I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
      I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
      I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. 125 I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
      Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
      When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
      By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130
      Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
  • In my own shire, if I was sad,
    Homely comforters I had:
    The earth, because my heart was sore,
    Sorrowed for the son she bore;
    And standing hills, long to remain,
    Shared their short-lived comrade's pain.
    And bound for the same bourn as I,
    On every road I wandered by,
    Trod beside me, close and dear,
    The beautiful and death-struck year:
    Whether in the woodland brown
    I heard the beechnut rustle down,
    And saw the purple crocus pale
    Flower about the autumn dale;
    Or littering far the fields of May
    Lady-smocks a-bleaching lay,
    And like a skylit water stood
    The bluebells in the azured wood.

    Yonder, lightening other loads,
    The seasons range the country roads,
    But here in London streets I ken
    No such helpmates, only men;
    And these are not in plight to bear,
    If they would, another's care.
    They have enough as 'tis: I see
    In many an eye that measures me
    The mortal sickness of a mind
    Too unhappy to be kind.
    Undone with misery, all they can
    Is to hate their fellow man;
    And till they drop they needs must still
    Look at you and wish you ill.

  • (not) Alone
    there are always 4 people behind you,
    even when you are just on your own.

    The one to your front is the person looking back on you,
    trying to figure out and doubting a little.

    the guy in the back is the one you look back on,
    is the one who:
    suffers or laughs whenever you are feeling happy and sad as well
    but in reversed order.

    Then we have your left,
    they are presenting memories, thoughts and feelings.

    on the right you have the emotions that control you,
    but each and every single one of them will help you go through life,
    not as good and positive as always but they will stay there forever.

    So never say you're going to be alone,
    You always have yourself to be counting on.

  • PFC Thomas stole my poem :D

  • edited October 2016

    "Life's a one way road. Don't just stand next to it and expect for someone to take you back." - 2016

    "You never know your true genius untill you do what you love" - 2014

  • Dulce et Decorum Est

    Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
    Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
    Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
    And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
    Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
    But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
    Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
    Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

    Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling
    Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
    But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
    And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—
    Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
    As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
    In all my dreams before my helpless sight
    He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

    If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
    Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
    And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
    His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
    If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
    Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
    Bitter as the cud
    Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —
    My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
    To children ardent for some desperate glory,
    The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
    Pro patria mori.

  • Men Who March Away

    What of the faith and fire within us
    Men who march away
    Ere the barn-cocks say
    Night is growing gray,
    To hazards whence no tears can win us;
    What of the faith and fire within us
    Men who march away?

    Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
    Friend with the musing eye
    Who watch us stepping by,
    With doubt and dolorous sigh?
    Can much pondering so hoodwink you!
    Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
    Friend with the musing eye?

    Nay. We see well what we are doing,
    Though some may not see —
    Dalliers as they be —
    England’s need are we;
    Her distress would leave us rueing:
    Nay. We well see what we are doing,
    Though some may not see!

    In our heart of hearts believing
    Victory crowns the just,
    And that braggarts must
    Surely bite the dust,
    Press we to the field ungrieving,
    In our heart of hearts believing
    Victory crowns the just.

    Hence the faith and fire within us
    Men who march away
    Ere the barn-cocks say
    Night is growing gray,
    Leaving all that here can win us;
    Hence the faith and fire within us
    Men who march away.

  • While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
    I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
    You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
    You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
    And we went on living in the village of Chōkan:
    Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
    At fourteen I married My Lord you.
    I never laughed, being bashful.
    Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
    Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

    At fifteen I stopped scowling,
    I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
    Forever and forever, and forever.
    Why should I climb the look out?

    At sixteen you departed
    You went into far Ku-tō-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
    And you have been gone five months.
    The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

    You dragged your feet when you went out.
    By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
    Too deep to clear them away!
    The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
    The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
    Over the grass in the West garden;
    They hurt me.
    I grow older.
    If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
    Please let me know beforehand,
    And I will come out to meet you
    As far as Chō-fū-Sa.

    ;_;

  • The Soldier

    If I should die, think only this of me:
    That there's some corner of a foreign field
    That is for ever England. There shall be
    In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
    A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
    Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
    A body of England's, breathing English air,
    Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

    And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
    A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
    Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
    Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
    And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
    In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

  • edited November 2016

    Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

    Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
    Enwrought with golden and silver light,
    The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
    Of night and light and the half light,
    I would spread the cloths under your feet:
    But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
    I have spread my dreams under your feet;
    Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
    

    W.B. Yeats (1899)

  • From a Man to a Soldier

    To those that stand,
    To those that fell,
    Treated like sand,
    Hear me yell!

    "Monsters you are not,
    For doing what you are told.
    You give the enemy shot for shot,
    but you take these memories 'til you are old."

    Scarred as you are,
    Brave as can be,
    You tred death to make us free,
    But not all stays the way it should be.

    Now at home in flashing dreams,
    You wake up at night with tears that sheen,
    Your morals mined like a cracked seam,
    Thinking "How am I seen?"

    Not a monster are you,
    Nor a boy as you once were,
    You're human as much as I,
    You've done your duty now rest in kind.

    I do not pray for I am not a pious man,
    Nor will I say "I know how you must feel,"
    Just know that as you all fight,
    I will be here hoping you come back.

  • Gimme gimme chicken tendies,
    Be they crispy or from Wendys.
    Spend my hard-earned good-boy points,
    on Kid's Meal ball pit burger joints.
    Mummy lifts me to the car,
    To find me tendies near and far.
    Enjoy my tasty tendie treats,
    in comfy big boy booster seats.
    McDonald's, Hardee's, Popeye's, Cane's,
    But of my tendies none remains.

    She tries to make me take a nappy,
    But sleeping doesn't make me happy.
    Tendies are the only food,
    That puts me in the napping mood.
    I'll scream and shout and make a fuss,
    I'll scratch, I'll bite, I'll even cuss!
    Tendies are my heart's desire,
    Fueled by raging, hungry fire.
    Mummy sobs and wails and cries,
    But tears aren't tendies, nugs or fries.

    My good-boy points were fairly earned,
    To buy the tendies that I've yearned.
    But there's no tendies on my plate!
    Did mummy think that I'd just ate?
    "TENDIES TENDIES GET THEM NOW,
    YOU FAT, UNGRATEFUL, SLUGGISH SOW!"
    REEEEEE!-

  • Snails

    It never fails,
    Those pesky snails,
    Are always in the pudding.

    Lousy guests,
    Those nasty pests,
    They're always up to something.

    I've tried like mad to find their nest,
    But snails are smart, I must confess.
    The trails they leave can fool the best-
    And snails are good at hiding.

    Oh well,
    At least they don't make threats,
    They don't eat meat, they don't place bets,
    They almost always pay their debts,
    And never puff on cigarettes.

    I think I'll keep these snails as pets,
    And feed them lots of pudding.

  • Old Age Pensioner's Knickers
    Roses' are red
    Violet's are blue
    Ethel's are green

  • For the Fallen
    Robert Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

    With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
    England mourns for her dead across the sea.
    Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
    Fallen in the cause of the free.

    Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
    Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
    There is music in the midst of desolation
    And a glory that shines upon our tears.

    They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
    Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
    They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
    They fell with their faces to the foe.

    They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
    Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
    At the going down of the sun and in the morning
    We will remember them.

    They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
    They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
    They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
    They sleep beyond England's foam.

    But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
    Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
    To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
    As the stars are known to the Night;

    As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
    Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
    As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
    To the end, to the end, they remain.

  • Hugh Selwyn Mauberley 1 by Ezra Pound

    (Life and Contacts)

               “Vocat aestus in umbram” 
                                                          Nemesianus Ec. IV.
    

    E. P. ODE POUR L’ÉLECTION DE SON SÉPULCHRE

    For three years, out of key with his time,
    He strove to resuscitate the dead art
    Of poetry; to maintain “the sublime”
    In the old sense. Wrong from the start—

    No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born
    In a half savage country, out of date;
    Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
    Capaneus; trout for factitious bait:

    “Idmen gar toi panth, os eni Troie
    Caught in the unstopped ear;
    Giving the rocks small lee-way
    The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year.

    His true Penelope was Flaubert,
    He fished by obstinate isles;
    Observed the elegance of Circe’s hair
    Rather than the mottoes on sun-dials.

    Unaffected by “the march of events,”
    He passed from men’s memory in l’an trentiesme
    De son eage; the case presents
    No adjunct to the Muses’ diadem.

    II
    The age demanded an image
    Of its accelerated grimace,
    Something for the modern stage,
    Not, at any rate, an Attic grace;

    Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries
    Of the inward gaze;
    Better mendacities
    Than the classics in paraphrase!

    The “age demanded” chiefly a mould in plaster,
    Made with no loss of time,
    A prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster
    Or the “sculpture” of rhyme.

    III
    The tea-rose, tea-gown, etc.
    Supplants the mousseline of Cos,
    The pianola “replaces”
    Sappho’s barbitos.

    Christ follows Dionysus,
    Phallic and ambrosial
    Made way for macerations;
    Caliban casts out Ariel.

    All things are a flowing,
    Sage Heracleitus says;
    But a tawdry cheapness
    Shall reign throughout our days.

    Even the Christian beauty
    Defects—after Samothrace;
    We see to kalon
    Decreed in the market place.

    Faun’s flesh is not to us,
    Nor the saint’s vision.
    We have the press for wafer;
    Franchise for circumcision.

    All men, in law, are equals.
    Free of Peisistratus,
    We choose a knave or an eunuch
    To rule over us.

    A bright Apollo,

    tin andra, tin eroa, tina theon,
    What god, man, or hero
    Shall I place a tin wreath upon?

    IV
    These fought, in any case,
    and some believing, pro domo, in any case ...

    Some quick to arm,
    some for adventure,
    some from fear of weakness,
    some from fear of censure,
    some for love of slaughter, in imagination,
    learning later ...

    some in fear, learning love of slaughter;
    Died some pro patria, non dulce non et decor” ...

    walked eye-deep in hell
    believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving
    came home, home to a lie,
    home to many deceits,
    home to old lies and new infamy;

    usury age-old and age-thick
    and liars in public places.

    Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
    Young blood and high blood,
    Fair cheeks, and fine bodies;

    fortitude as never before

    frankness as never before,
    disillusions as never told in the old days,
    hysterias, trench confessions,
    laughter out of dead bellies.

    V
    There died a myriad,
    And of the best, among them,
    For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
    For a botched civilization.

    Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
    Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid,

    For two gross of broken statues,
    For a few thousand battered books.

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