<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=518927" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Conscripts</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">‘Fall in, that awkward squad, and strike no more <br>Attractive attitudes! Dress by the right! <br>The luminous rich colours that you wore <br>Have changed to hueless khaki in the night. <br>Magic? What’s magic got to do with you?<br>There’s no such thing! Blood’s red, and skies are blue.’ </div><div style="margin:10px 0">They gasped and sweated, marching up and down. <br>I drilled them till they cursed my raucous shout. <br>Love chucked his lute away and dropped his crown. <br>Rhyme got sore heels and wanted to fall out.<br>‘Left, right! Press on your butts!’ They looked at me <br>Reproachful; how I longed to set them free! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I gave them lectures on Defence, Attack; <br>They fidgeted and shuffled, yawned and sighed, <br>And boggled at my questions. Joy was slack,<br>And Wisdom gnawed his fingers, gloomy-eyed. <br>Young Fancy—how I loved him all the while— <br>Stared at his note-book with a rueful smile. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Their training done, I shipped them all to France, <br>Where most of those I’d loved too well got killed.<br>Rapture and pale Enchantment and Romance, <br>And many a sickly, slender lord who’d filled <br>My soul long since with lutanies of sin, <br>Went home, because they couldn’t stand the din. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But the kind, common ones that I despised<br>(Hardly a man of them I’d count as friend), <br>What stubborn-hearted virtues they disguised! <br>They stood and played the hero to the end, <br>Won gold and silver medals bright with bars, <br>And marched resplendent home with crowns and stars.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Siegfried+Sassoon">Siegfried Sassoon</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=518927" data-title="Conscripts de Siegfried Sassoon" data-description="‘Fall in, that awkward squad, and strike no more Attractive attitudes! Dress by the right! The luminous rich colours that you wore Have changed to hueless khaki in the night. Magic? What’s magic got to do with you? There’s no such thing!..."></div> </div> </div>

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