Losers
THOSE are judged losers and fortune-flouted
Whose flighted hopes fell down short of satisfaction : The killed in action, the blasted in beauty, all choosers Of the wrong channel for love's seasonal spate ; Cheerless some amid rock or rank forest life-long Laboured to hew an estate, but they died childless ; Those within hail of home by blizzard o'ertaken ; Those waking from vision with truth on tongue, struck dumb : Are deemed yet to have been transfigured in failure.
Men mourn their beauty and promise, publish the diaries ; Medals are given ; the graves are evergreen with pity ; Their fire is forwarded through the hearts of the living.
What can we say of these, from the womb wasted, Whose nerve was never tested in act, who fell at the start, Who had no beauty to lose, born out of season ?
Early an iron frost clamped down their flowing Desires. They were lost at once : they failed and died in the whirling Snow bewildered, homeless from first to last.
Frightened we stop our ears to the truth they are telling Who toil to remain alive, whose children start from sleep Weeping into a day worse than nightmares.
Splendour of cities they built cannot ennoble The barely Lig, ambitious for bread alone. Pity Stains not her robe with these and their despairs.
C. D.4.1( LEWIS.
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