What can he do here in this ruined country?
How lovely and how dangerous it is
To the sprung mind of the winter hero;
How easy to be drawn into the vales
Of cider, cream, and staining blackberries.
All Britain seems to him a rose
Without a thorn, in an eternal summer.
He drinks the dark draught of that memory
Which, turned up, is a man's forgetfulness
Of what his fate cries out for him to do.

Some male disfigured thing in him would call
The dwellers in this land a race of cowards
Rooting like social rodents in the shells
Of fallen temples, domes, and architraves;
Looting the graven stones for urinals;
Punishing what in their young is splendid
...