We are at war, and see so many strange things: some we must forget,
some we must remember; and we cannot choose which.

To turn from Kent to Flanders is to turn to a time of mourning through
all seasons alike. Spring there brings out no leaf on myriad oaks, nor
the haze of green that floats like a halo above the heads of the birch
trees, that stand with their fairylike trunks haunting the deeps of
the woods. For miles and miles and miles summer ripens no crops, leads
out no maidens laughing in the moonlight, and brings no harvest home.
When Autumn looks on orchards in all that region of mourning he looks
upon barren trees that will never blossom again. Winter drives in no
sturdy farmers at evening to sit before cheery fires, families meet
not at Christmas, and the bells are dumb in belfries; for all by which
a man might remember his home has been utterly swept away: has been
swept away to make a maniacal dancing ground on which a murderous
people dance to their death led by a shallow, clever, callous,
imperial clown.

There they dance to their doom till their feet shall find the
precipice that was prepared for them on the day that they planned the
evil things they have done.

The Nightmare Countries

There are certain lands in the darker dreams of poetry that stand out
in the memory of generations. There is for instance Poe's ``Dark tarn
of Auber, the ghoul-haunted region of Weir''; there are some queer
twists in the river Alph as imagined by Coleridge; two lines of
Swinburne: