Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom <br />Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals <br />Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots <br />And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky <br />Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down <br />The stale despair of night, must now renew <br />Their desolation in the truce of dawn, <br />Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace. <br /> <br />Yet these, who cling to life with stubborn hands, <br />Can grin through storms of death and find a gap <br />In the clawed, cruel tangles of his defence. <br />They march from safety, and the bird-sung joy <br />Of grass-green thickets, to the land where all <br />Is ruin, and nothing blossoms but the sky <br />That hastens over them where they endure <br />Sad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods, <br />And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for doom. <br /> <br />O my brave brown companions, when your souls <br />Flock silently away, and the eyeless dead <br />Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge, <br />Death will stand grieving in that field of war <br />Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent. <br />And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass <br />Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell; <br />The unreturning army that was youth; <br />The legions who have suffered and are dust.<br /><br />Siegfried Sassoon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/prelude-the-troops/
