Tell me, what greater love has a person than that they lay down their life for home and country. The poetry is by Wilfred Owen, written about what was called the Great War. There is no greatness in war, only in the people that go there to ensure our freedom and our liberty. Wilfred was a Brit, writing mostly about what he saw, but these words relate to any warrior (male or female) of any country who go out there and put their lives on the line...for whom?..for us. We live in times where ordinary warfare has been in part replaced by terrorism, but this is just war of another kind, cowardly, dastardly hiding in anonymity. Destroying civilians, people who are going about their every day business. Women, men, children, no respect for age, sex or belief. I give my thanks, small though they be fo rthose who still stand up and put themselves in the front line in order that I and my children may live in a world. Comments welcome.
(PS: yes, I am ex military and from a family proud to have fought for generations in any way requested for country and kin).
Greater Love
Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!
Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce Love they bear
Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.
Your voice sings not so soft, --
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft, --
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.
Heart, you were never hot,
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.
Wilfred Owen
