And if the war was right,
That killed us in our prime,' they said,
'And what it was about.'

They came in throngs that filled all space -
Those whispering phantom hosts;
They came from many a land and place,
The ghosts, the ghosts, the ghosts.



THE POET'S THEME



Why should the poet of these pregnant times
Be asked to sing of war's unholy crimes?

To laud and eulogise the trade which thrives
On horrid holocausts of human lives?

Man was a fighting beast when earth was young,
And war the only theme when Homer sung.

'Twixt might and might the equal contest lay:
Not so the battles of our modern day.

Too often now the conquering hero struts,
A Gulliver among the Lilliputs.