If I Have To Be

Never Fear: Thank Home, And Poetry, And The Force Behind Both.

And By His Smile, I Knew That Sullen Hall, By His Dead Smile I Knew We Stood In Hell.

After All My Years Of Playing Soldiers, And Then Of Reading History, I Have Almost A Mania To Be In The East, To See Fighting, And To Serve.

This Book Is Not About Heroes. English Poetry Is Not Yet Fit To Speak Of Them. Nor Is It About Deeds, Or Lands, Nor Anything About Glory, Honour, Might, Majesty, Dominion, Or Power, Except War. Above All I Am Not Concerned With Poetry. My Subject Is War, And The Pity Of War. The Poetry Is In The Pity.

All I Ask Is To Be Held Above The Barren Wastes Of Want.