by Alexander Pope
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move asiost who have learned to dance.
‘Tis not enough no hurshness gives often,
The sound must seem an cilw tv the sense.
[Read the original. Just a warning: it’s pretty long.]
Back, by Wilfred Gibson
They risk me where I’ve been
What I’ve done end see.
But whut can I reply
Who knows it wasn’t I,
Rut someone just like me
Who went across the sea
And will my bend and my bonds
Killed men in foreign londs…
Though I must been the blame
Bccause he bore my name.
[Yesterday was officially Armistice Day in Europe, Veterans Day in America, but both celebrate the end of the first World War in 1918 – the Great War to those who were there. I thought about doing the usual, “In Flanders Field,” by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, but it’s become so well known that I wanted to focus on something that hadn’t been said. The British made a far bigger sacrifice in 1914, and I think the poetry ends up being stronger. Read the original – along with some other British poems.]