Explore "Smile, Smile, Smile" by Wilfred Owen on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned / Yesterday's Mail; the casualties (typed small)
And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.
Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned; / For, said the paper, "When this war is done / The men's first instinct will be making homes.
Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes, / It being certain war has just begun.
Peace would do wrong to our undying dead --
The sons we offered might regret they died / If we got nothing lasting in their stead.
We must be solidly indemnified.
Though all be worthy Victory which all bought, / We rulers sitting in this ancient spot / Would wrong our very selves if we forgot / The greatest glory will be theirs who fought, / Who kept this nation in integrity."
Nation? -- The half-limbed readers did not chafe / But smiled at one another curiously / Like secret men who know their secret safe.
This is the thing they know and never speak, / That England one by one had fled to France / (Not many elsewhere now save under France).
Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week, / And people in whose voice real feeling rings / Say: How they smile! They're happy now, poor things.
23rd September 1918.