Found a book of almost 100 year old poems

[John Sukey]

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like beggars under sacks
Knock kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And toward our distant rest began to trudge
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on , blood shod. All went lame, all blind
Drunk with fatigue, deaf even to the hoots
Of gas shells dropping softly behind

Gas! Gas! Quick boys!-An ectasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man on fire or lime
Dim,through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, chokimg, drowning

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile,incurable sores on innocent tongues
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est. Pro Patria mori.
Wilfred Owen

GRASS

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo
Shovel them under and let me work
I am the grass, I cover all

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun
Shovel them under and let me work
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass, let me work
Carl Sandburg

THE DUG OUT

Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
And one arm bent across your sullen,cold
Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you
Deep-shadow'd from the candle's guttering gold
And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder,
Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head
You are too young to fall asleep forever
And when you sleep, you remind me of the dead.
Siegfried Sassoon

[JohnMOhio]

Real life observations.

John