Don't Cheer

Don't cheer, damn you! Don't cheer!

Silence! Your bitterest tear

Is fulsomely sweet to-day. . . .

Down on your knees and pray.



See, they sing as they go,

Marching row upon row.

Who will be spared to return,

Sombre and starkly stern?

Chaps whom we knew - s0 strange,

Distant and dark with change;

Silent as those they slew,

Something in them dead too.

Who will return this way,

To sing as they sing to-day.



Send to the glut of the guns

Bravest and best of you sons.

Hurl a million to slaughter,

Blood flowing like Thames water;

Pile up pyramid high

Your dead to the anguished sky;

A monument down all time

Of hate and horror and crime.

Weep, rage, pity, curse, fear -

Anything, but . . . don't cheer.



Sow to the ploughing guns

Seed of your splendid sons.

Let your heroic slain

Richly manure the plain.

What will the harvest be?

Unborn of Unborn will see. . . .



Dark is the sky and drear. . . .

For the pity of God don't cheer.

Dark and dread is their way.

Who sing as they march to-day. . . .

Humble your hearts and pray.