Because your heart are ice---But your hate a flame --- You are rabid dogs --- And your souls are lame.

Because in your sad life
Hope finds nothing left,
All your kindness gone
And your faith bereft.

Because you worshipped the gods
Of blood and revenge,
Because you washed the land
And made it strange.

Because you did all this
Because we died for you
In uncomplaining herds
It's time we said what's true:

In their safe routines
It's the old we condemn,
And on the council bench
The nodding aldermen.

We were young, we were fools
But will never understand
Why we were sent forever
To no-man's-land.

You were never like us
In the lover's lanes
With instinctive spring
Thrilling in our veins:

You were never like us
With an appetite
That a breath or a flower
Or the dawn could ignite.

We made living itself
Our bravery's boast,
We were the chosen few
Of the Holy Ghost.

But there's none have survived
The bayonet charge
Or the howling trench
Or the mortar barrage.

No, we are not like you -
The moth-eaten men -
For whom love has whispered
Its ultimate amen.

But today there's a smile
Where a curse had stung:
We are not like you.
We and I are forever young.