Page:Sassoon, Siegfried - Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918).djvu/33



"He'd never seen so many dead before." They sprawled in yellow daylight while he swore And gasped and lugged his everlasting load Of bombs along what once had been a road. "How peaceful are the dead." Who put that silly gag in some one's head?

"He'd never seen so many dead before." The lilting words danced up and down his brain, While corpses jumped and capered in the rain. No, no; he wouldn't count them any more. . . The dead have done with pain: They've choked; they can't come back to life again.

When Dick was killed last week he looked like that, Flapping along the fire-step like a fish,