The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

‘Dreamers’ (1918)
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.
‘Dreamers’ (1918)
Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
And one arm bent across your sullen cold
Exhausted face?...
You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.
‘The Dug-Out’ (1919)
Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom.
‘Everyone Sang’ (1919)
The song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
‘Everyone Sang’ (1919)
‘Good-morning; good morning!’ the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
But he did for them both by his plan of attack.
‘The General’ (1918)
Splendid to eat and sleep and choose a wife,
Safe with his wound, a citizen of life.
He hobbled blithely through the garden gate,
And thought: ‘Thank God they had to amputate!’
‘The One-Legged Man’ (1917)
Who will remember, passing through this Gate,
The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate,—
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?
‘On Passing the New Menin Gate’ (1928)
Here was the world’s worst wound. And here with pride
‘Their name liveth for ever’ the Gateway claims.
Was ever an immolation so belied
As these intolerably nameless names?
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime
Rise and devide this sepulchre of crime.