by Young kept Edmund Blunden sane in the trenches. You can see how Blunden draws strength from the long poem in his own, Undertones of War. I went in search of Night Thoughts. The great Library of the Dead yields another, time-slaying treasure.
All men think all men mortal, but themselves:
Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate
Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread;
But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,
Soon close; where pass’d the shaft, no trace is found.
As from the wing no scar the sky retains;
The parted wave no furrow from the keel;
So dies in human hearts the thought of death.