The darkness crumbles away
It is the same old Druid Time as ever.
Only a live thing leaps at my hand
A queer sardonic rat
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.

Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies

Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.

It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes

Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.

What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?

Poppies whose roots are in man's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.