Explore "Sending to the War" by William Morris on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
IT was down in our far-off village that we heard of the war begun, / But none of the neighbours were in it save the squire's thick-lipped son, / A youth and a fool and a captain, who came and went away, / And left me glad of his going. There was little for us to say / Of the war and its why and wherefore-and we said it often enough; / The papers gave us our wisdom, and we used it up in the rough.
But I held my peace and wondered; for I thought of the folly of men, / The fair lives ruined and broken that ne'er could be mended again; / And the tale by lies bewildered, and no cause for a man to choose; / Nothing to curse or to bless-just a game to win or to lose.