Insensibility
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Happy are men who yet before they are killedCan let their veins run cold.Whom no compassion fleersOr makes their feetSore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.The front line withers,But they are troops who fade, not flowersFor poets' tearful fooling:Men, gaps for fillingLosses who might have foughtLonger; but no one bothers. II And some cease feelingEven themselves or for themselves.Dullness best solvesThe tease and doubt of shelling,And Chance's strange arithmeticComes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.They keep no check on Armies' decimation. III Happy are these who lose imagination:They have enough to carry with ammunition.Their spirit drags no pack.Their old wounds save with cold can not more ache.Having seen all things red,Their eyes are ridOf the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.And terror's first constriction over,Their hearts remain small drawn.Their senses in some scorching cautery of battleNow long since ironed,Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned. IV Happy the soldier home, with not a notionHow somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,And many sighs are drained.Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:His days are worth forgetting more than not.He sings along the marchWhich we march taciturn, because of dusk,The long, forlorn, relentless trendFrom larger day to huger night. V We wise, who with a thought besmirchBlood over all our soul,How should we see our taskBut through his blunt and lashless eyes?Alive, he is not vital overmuch;Dying, not mortal overmuch;Nor sad, nor proud,Nor curious at all.He cannot tellOld men's placidity from his. VI But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,That they should be as stones.Wretched are they, and meanWith paucity that never was simplicity.By choice they made themselves immuneTo pity and whatever mourns in manBefore the last sea and the hapless stars;Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;Whatever sharesThe eternal reciprocity of tears.
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