W. B. Yeats, 1865 - 1939

I know that I shall meet my fate   Somewhere among the clouds above;   Those that I fight I do not hate   Those that I guard I do not love;   My country is Kiltartan Cross,My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,   No likely end could bring them loss   Or leave them happier than before.   Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,   Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,A lonely impulse of delight   Drove to this tumult in the clouds;   I balanced all, brought all to mind,   The years to come seemed waste of breath,   A waste of breath the years behindIn balance with this life, this death.

War broke: and now the Winter of the world
With perishing great darkness closes in.
The foul tornado, centred at Berlin,
Is over all the width of Europe whirled,
Rending the sails of progress. Rent or furled
Are all Art's ensigns. Verse wails. Now begin
Famines of thought and feeling. Love's wine's thin.
The grain of human Autumn rots, down-hurled.

For after Spring had bloomed in early Greece,
And Summer blazed her glory out with Rome,
An Autumn softly fell, a harvest home,
A slow grand age, and rich with all increase.
But now, for us, wild Winter, and the need
Of sowings for new Spring, and blood for seed.

Wilfred Owen 1893 - 1918

I remember reading Wilfred Owen's poems when i was a teenager. I found them touching then, perhaps even more now.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Written during the First World War by Canadian physician Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.