To a young soldier

YOU have just begun to know
your manhood and learnt to throw

away your childish schooling:

death's challenge bright to your eyes,
the war-mechanized earth and skies

so triumphantly ruling.

Your soul's roots do not strike fast
in a loved intenser past

as ours who are older,

for whom the world to-day is dead
each hour the road we numbly tread

growing greyer and colder.

But it is ours to regain
old certainties after the pain

of this strange illness—

have you some sure path to find
when you stand stunned and blind

in the after-war stillness!

Or, lost the comforting team life,
the tense cathartic zest of strife

in exciting confusion,

companions and incentive gone,
will you find in yourself alone

emptiness and lost illusion!

28 November 1944