Dress-uniform boys who rubbed their buttons brighter than gold, And gave them to girls for flowers and raspberry-lemonade, Unused to the sick fatigue, the route-march made in the cold, The stink of the fever camps, the tarnish rotting the blade.

We in our time have seen that impulse going to war And how that impulse is dealt with. We have seen the circle complete. The ripe wheat wasted like trash between the fool and the whore. We cannot praise again that anger of the ripe wheat.

This we have seen as well, distorted and half-forgotten In what came before and after, where the blind went leading the blind, The first swift rising of youth before the symbols were rotten, The price too much to pay, the payment haughty in kind.