“Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloomShudders to drizzling daybreak that revealsDisconsolate men who stamp their sodden bootsAnd turn dulled, sunken faces to the skyHaggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten downThe stale despair of night, must now renewTheir desolation in the truce of dawn,Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace.Yet these, who cling to life with stubborn hands,Can grin through storms of death and find a gapIn the clawed, cruel tangles of his defence.They march from safety, and the bird-sung joyOf grass-green thickets, to the land where allIs ruin, and nothing blossoms but the skyThat hastens over them where they endureSad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods,And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for doom.O my brave brown companions, when your soulsFlock silently away, and the eyeless dead,Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge,Death will stand grieving in that field of warSince your unvanquished hardihood is spent.And through some mooned Valhalla there will passBattalions and battalions, scarred from hell;The unreturning army that was youth;The legions who have suffered and are dust.”