Poet's corner No.10

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? 

 Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

 Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle 

 Can patter out their hasty orisons.

 No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; 

 Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, – 

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; 

 And bugles calling for them from sad shires. 

What candles may be held to speed them all?

 Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes

 Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

 The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; 

 Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

 And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen
Anthem for Doomed Youth

 

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.

Rupert Brooke
The Soldier

Sean Bean and others read first world war poetry – Guardian