Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/282

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How can I gaze unmov'd on sights like these?

What hideous enervation bids me sit

Here in the shelter of this neighbour pit,

Untroubled, unperturbèd, at mine ease,

And idly, coldly scan

This fearsome relic of what once was man?

Alas! what icy spell hath set

The seal upon warm pity? Whence

This freezing up of every sense?

I think not I lack pitifulness;—I know

That my affections were not ever so;

My heart is not of stone!—And yet

There's something in the feeling of this place,

There's something in the breathing of this air,

Which lets me gaze upon that awful face

Quite passionless; which lets me meet that stare

Most quietly.—Nay, I could touch that hair,

And sicken not to feel it coil and cling

About my fingers. Did occasion press,

Lo! I could spurn it with my foot—that thing

Which lies so nigh!—

Spurn it light-heartedly and pass it by.

So cold, so hard, so seeming pitiless

Am I!

And yet not I alone;—they know full well,

These others, that strange blunting of the heart:

They know the workings of that devil's-art,

Which drains a man's soul dry,

And kills out sensibility!

They know it too, and they can tell

That this distemper strange and fell,

This hideous blotting of the sense,

Creeps on one like a pestilence!

It is some deadly Power of ill

Which overbears all human will!

Some awful influence of the sky,