Arrived upon the downs of asphodel

I walked towards the military quarter

To find the sunburnt ghosts of allied soldiers

Killed on the Chersonese.

I met a band of palefaced weary men

Got up in old equipment. “Hi”, I said

‘Are you Gallipoli?’

And one, the leader, with a voice of gold,

Answered: “No. Ours, sir, was an older bungle.

We are Athenian hopltes who sat down

Before young Syracuse.

‘Need I recount our too-much-memoired end?

The hesitancy of our General Stuff,

The battle of the Harbour, where Hope fled

But we could not?

‘Not our disgrace in that”, the leader added,

‘But we are those proficient in the arts

Freed in return for the repeated verses

Of our Euripides.

‘Those honeyed words did not soothe Cerebrus’

(The leader grinned), ‘For sulky Charon hire

Deficient, and by Rhadamanthos ruled

No mitigation.

‘And yet with men, born victims of their ears

The chorus of the weeping Troades

Prevailed to gain the freedom of our limbs

And waft us back to Athens.

‘Through every corridor of this old barracks

We wander without friends; not fallen or

Survivors in a military sense:

Hence our disgrace’.

He turned; and as the rank mists took them in

They chanted of the God to Whom men pray,

Whether He be Compulsion, or All-Fathering,

Or Fate and blind.