A Dead Boche

To you who’d read my songs of War And only hear of blood and fame,

I’ll say (you’ve heard it said before)

”War’s Hell!”

and if you doubt the same, Today I found in Mametz Wood A certain cure for lust of blood: Where, propped against a shattered trunk,

In a great mess of things unclean, Sat a dead Boche;

he scowled and stunk With clothes and face a sodden green,

Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired, Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.

Robert Graves.