If I have got to be a soldier, I must be a good one, anything else is unthinkable.

He’s lost his colour very far from here,Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry

The war effects me less than it ought. I can do no service to anybody by agitating for news or making dole over the slaughter.

All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the truest poets must be truthful.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

I am only conscious of any satisfaction in Scientific Reading or thinking when it rounds off into a poetical generality and vagueness.

My arms have mutinied against me brutes!My fingers fidget like ten idle brats,My back’s been stiff for hours, damned hours.Death never gives his squad a Stand-at-ease.

Those who have no hope pass their old age shrouded with an inward gloom.

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.

I don’t ask myself, Is the life congenial to me? but, Am I fitted for,am I called to, the Ministry?

Red lips are not so red/ As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.

When I begin to eliminate from the list all those professions which are impossible from a financial point of view and then those which I feel disinclined to-it leaves nothing.

And in the happy no-time of his sleeping/ Death took him by the heart.

Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.No soldier’s paid to kick against His powers.We laughed, — knowing that better men would come,And greater wars: when each...

I find purer philosophy in a Poem than in a Conclusion of Geometry, a chemical analysis, or a physical law.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

These men are worth your tears. You are not worth their merriment.

A Poem does not grow by jerks. As trees in Spring produce a new ring of tissue, so does every poet put forth a fresh outlay of stuff at the same season.

Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout”I see your lights!” But ours had long died out.

I was a boy when I first realized that the fullest life liveable was a Poet’s.

Behold,A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.But the old man would not so, but slew his son…

Dulce Et Decorum EstBent 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....

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.

I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears; and caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts; and buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts; and rusted every bayonet with His tears.

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.

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....

All I ask is to be held above the barren wastes of want.

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....

Never fear: Thank Home, and Poetry, and the Force behind both.

Now rather thank I God there is no riskOf gravers scoring it with florid screed.Let my inscription be this soldier’s disc.Wear it, sweet friend. Inscribe no date nor deed.But may thy heart-beat kiss it, night...

Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.

All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.

You shall not hear their mirth:You shall not come to think them well contentBy any jest of mine. These men are worthYour tears:You are not worth their merriment.

Numbers of the old people cannot read. Those who can seldom do.

Shall Life renew these bodies? Of a truthAll death will he annul, all tears assuage?Or fill these void veins full again with youthAnd wash with an immortal water age?

The universal pervasion of ugliness, hideous landscapes, vile noises, foul language…everything. Unnatural, broken, blasted; the distortion of the dead, whose unburiable bodies sit outside the dug outs all day, all night, the most execrable sights...

Ambition may be defined as the willingness to receive any number of hits on the nose.

Now beginFamines of thought and feeling.

She is elegant rather than belle.

Move him into the sun Gently its touch awoke him once,At home, whispering of fields unsown.Always it woke him, even in France,Until this morning and this snow.

All a poet can do today is warn.

Be bullied, be outraged, by killed, but do not kill.

As bronze may be much beautified by lying in the dark damp soil, so men who fade in dust of warfare fade fairer, and sorrow blooms their soul.

The English say, Yours Truly, and mean it. The Italians say, I kiss your feet, and mean, I kick your head.

My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?Only the monstrous anger of the guns.Only the stuttering rifle’s rapid rattleCan patter out their hasty orisons.No mockeries now for them; no prayers, nor bells,Nor any voice...

Do you know what would hold me together on a battlefield? The sense that I was perpetuating the language in which Keats and the rest of them wrote!

Consummation is consumption.We cannot consummate our bliss and not consume.All joys are cakes and vanish in eating.All bliss is sugar’s melting in the mouth.

The isolation from any whose interests are the same as mine, the constant, inevitable mixing with persons whose influence will tend in the opposite direction-this is a serious drawback.