Let no one ever, from henceforth say one word in any way countenancing war. It is dangerous even to speak of how here and there the individual may ga… - Siegfried Sassoon

Let no one ever from henceforth say a word in any way countenancing war. It is dangerous even to speak of how here and there the individual may gain some hardship of soul by it. For war is hell and those who institute it are criminals.

October's bellowing anger breakes and cleaves The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves For battle's fruitless harvest, and the feud Of outrage men. Their lives are like the leaves Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown Along the westering furnace flaring red. O martyred youth and manhood overthrown, The burden of your wrongs is on my head.

As regards being dead, however, one of my main consolations has always been that I have the strongest intention of being an extremely active ghost. Let nobody make any mistake about that.

His face - what would it have become? While calling him back in memory I have been haunted by the idea of the unalterable features of those who have died in youth. Borne away from them by the years, we - with our time-troubled looks and diminished alertness - have submitted to many a gradual detriment of change. But the young poet of twenty-five years ago remains his world-discovering self. His futureless eyes encounter ours from the faintly smiling portrait, unconscious of the privilege and deprivation of never growing old, unconscious of the dramatic illusion of completeness that he is destined to create.