his eyes and wakened terrible thoughts in him when he wrote his starkly realistic 'Casualty List,' and saw not the glory of his friend's death on the field, but 'the obvious murderous silliness' of it, and cried out in impotent anger—
How long, how long
shall there be Something
that can grind the faces of poor men
to an ultimate uniformity of dullness
and grinning trivial meanness?
Or pitchfork them at will
(cheering and singing patriotic doggerel)
to a stinking hell,
to crash about for a little,
noisily, miserably;
till the inevitable comes,
and crushes them
bloodily, meanly?
And a year earlier, before he had obtained his commission, watching a draft depart for the front, 'silently, and with no song at all,' though he could see some compensation in death after the 'clean-souled strife' to which they were going, he had it in him to
'hate the gods that still can send
Men to such harvesting of bloody grain.'
