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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=358658" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Wars and the Unknown Soldier</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I<br>Dry leaves, soldier, dry leaves, dead leaves;<br>voices of leaves on the wind that bears them to<br>destruction,<br>impassioned prayer, impassioned hymn of delight<br>of the gladly doomed to die. Stridor of beasts,<br>stridor of men, praises of lust and battle,<br>numberless as waves, the waves singing<br>to the wind that bears them down.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Under Osiris,<br>him of the Egyptian priests, Osynmandyas the King,<br>easward into Asia we passed, swarmed over Bactria,<br>three thousand years before Christ.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The history of war<br>is the history of mankind.<br>So many dead:<br>look at them there in the dark, look at them going,<br>the longest parade of all, the parade of the dead:<br>between then and now, seven thousand million dead:<br>dead on the filed of battle.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The people which is not ready<br>to guard its gods, and its household gods, with the<br>sword,<br>who knows but it will find itself with nothing<br>save honour to defend - ?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Consider, soldier<br>whatever name you go by, doughboy, dogface,<br>marine or tommy. God's mercenary – consider our lot<br>in the days if the single combat. You have been seen on the <br>seashore.<br>In the offshore wind blown backward, a wavecrest<br>windwhipped and quivering, borne helpless and<br>briefly<br>to fall underfoot of an oncoming seawall, foam-<br>smothered,<br>once more to recede, wind-thwarted again; thus<br>deathward<br>the battle lines whelmed and divided. The darkling<br>battalions<br>locked arms in chaos, the bravest, the heroes,<br>kept in the forefront' and this line once broken,<br>our army was done for.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II<br>In the new city of marble and bright stone,<br>the city named for a captain; in the capital:<br>under the solemn echoing dome, in the still tomb,<br>lies an unknown soldier.*</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the brown city,<br>old and shabby, by the muddy Thames, in the gaunt<br>avenue<br>where Romans blessed with Latin the oyster and the<br>primrose,<br>the stone shaft speaks of another. Those who pass<br>bare their heads in the rain, pausing to listen+</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Across grey water, red poppies on cliffs and chalk.<br>Hidden under the arch, in the city of light,<br>the city beloved of Abelard rests a third,<br>nameless as those, but the fluttering flame<br>substituting for a name.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Three unknown soldiers:<br>three, let us say, out of many. On the proud arch<br>names shine like stars, the names of battles and<br>victories;<br>but never the name of the man, you, the unknown.<br>Down there runs the river, under dark walls of rock,<br>parapets of rock, stone steps that green to the water.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There they fished up in the twilight another unknown,<br>the one they call <br>L'Inconnue de la Seine<br>: drowned<br>hands,<br>drowned hair, drowned eyes, masked like marble she<br>listens<br>to the drip-drop secret of silence; and the pale eyelids<br>enclose and disclose what they know, the illusion <br>found like fire under Lethe. Devotion here sainted<br>the love here deathless. The strong purpose turns<br>from the daggered lamplight, from the little light to<br>the lesser,<br>from stone to stone stepping, from the nex-to-the-lasy<br>heartbeat and footstep even to the sacred, to the last.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Love: devotion: sacrifice: death: can we call her<br>unknown<br>who has not unknown to herself more? Whose love<br>lives still<br>as if death itself were alive and divine?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And you, the soldier<br>you who are dead: is it not so with you?<br>Love: devotion: sacrifice: death: can we call you<br>unknown,<br>you who knew what you did? The soldier is crystal:<br>crystal of man: clear heart, clear duty, clear purpose.<br>No soldier can be unknown. Only he is unknown<br>who is unknown to himself.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Conrad+Potter+Aiken">Conrad Potter Aiken</a><div class=q>
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Dry leaves, soldier, dry leaves, dead leaves;
voices of leaves on the wind that bears them to
destruction,
impassioned prayer, impassioned hymn of delight
of the gladly doomed to die. Stridor of beasts,
stridor of men, praises of lust and battle..."></div>
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