Who rots in his own head.…
The fool’s vision of men going into battle is not a vision of knights of the Holy Ghost nobly falling in the lists with their country looking on, but of men’s bodies—
Dragging cold cannon through a mire
Of rain and blood and spouting fire,
The new moon glinting hard on eyes
Wide with insanities!
In The Marionettes Mr. de la Mare turns to tragic satire for relief from the bitterness of a war-maddened world:
Let the foul scene proceed:
There's laughter in the wings;
’Tis sawdust that they bleed,