From a high vantage we watched the battle progress

We watched as young men ignorant of delicate flowers

Were torn apart by the confusion of war

Each man slaughtered had experienced a childhood

Whether idyllic or not this was of no matter

It was their childhood

Which now lay shattered in the mud of the battlefield

Angels hovered above these men but were afraid to venture too close

Afraid that they too would become contaminated

By the sorrows

By the sorrows

By the sorrows of the void

 

George Smith (1916)