Anthem for Doomed Youth - Wilfred Owen

I was reading World War I poetry with my literature class today.  It's tough stuff, hard to read, but I think it's important not to distance ourselves too far from it.  After all, it's real.  In particular, Wilfred Owen's work is so masterful and vivid that it's very difficult to read.  This is definitely one of the least disturbing of his well-known poems, and yet still painful enough.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
-- Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, --
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.