Edmund Blunden Preparations for Victory

My soul, dread not the pestilence that hags

The valley; flinch not you, my body young,

At these great shouting smokes and snarling jags

Of fiery iron; as yet may not be flung

The dice that claims you. Manly move among

These ruins, and what you must do, do well;

Look, here are gardens, there mossed boughs are hung

With apples whose bright cheeks none might excel,

And there's a house as yet unshattered by a shell.

'I'll do my best,' the soul makes sad reply,

'And I will mark the yet unmurdered tree,

The tokens of dear homes that court the eye,

And yet I see them not as I would see.

Hovering between, a ghostly enemy.

Sickens the light, and poisoned, withered, wan,

The least defiled turns desperate to me.'

The body, poor unpitied Caliban,

Parches and sweats and grunts to win the name of Man.

Days or eternities like swelling waves

Surge on, and still we drudge in this dark maze;

The bombs and coils and cans by strings of slaves

Are borne to serve the coming day of days;

Pale sleep in slimy cellars scare allays

With its brief blank the burden. Look, we lose;

The sky is gone, the lightless, drenching haze

Of rainstorm chills the bone; earth, air are foes,

The black fiend leaps brick-red as life's last picture goes.