I did not dread the dark winter as people do when they have lost their youth and live alone in some great city. — Siegfried Sassoon, <i>Memoirs of a … - Siegfried Sassoon

I did not dread the dark winter as people do when they have lost their youth and live alone in some great city.

Soldiers are dreamers.

The anguish of the earth absolves our eyes
Till beauty shines in all that we can see.
War is our scourge; yet war has made us wise,
And, fighting for our freedom, we are free.

Horror of wounds and anger at the foe,
And loss of things desired; all these must pass.
We are the happy legion, for we know
Time's but a golden wind that shakes the grass.

There was an hour when we were loth to part
From life we longed to share no less than others.
Now, having claimed this heritage of heart,
What need we more, my comrades and my brothers?

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.