The Send-off by Wilfred Owen
Owen read by Classic Poetry Aloud:\nhttp://www.classicpoetryaloud.com/\nGiving voice to the poetry of the past.\n\n---------------------------------------------\n\nThe Send-off \nby Wilfred Owen (1893 \u2013 1918)\n\nDown the close, darkening lanes they sang their way\nTo the siding-shed,\nAnd lined the train with faces grimly gay.\nTheir breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray\nAs men's are, dead.\n\nDull porters watched them, and a casual tramp\nStood staring hard,\nSorry to miss them from the upland camp.\nThen, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp\nWinked to the guard.\n\nSo secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.\nThey were not ours:\nWe never heard to which front these were sent.\n\nNor there if they yet mock what women meant\nWho gave them flowers.\n\nShall they return to beatings of great bells\nIn wild trainloads?\nA few, a few, too few for drums and yells,\nMay creep back, silent, to still village wells\nUp half-known roads.