Greater Love

Red lips are not so red
   As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
   When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude
   Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce love they bear
   Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft,--
   Though even as wind murmuring through raftered
      loft,--
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear,
   Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that
      coughed.

Heart, you were never hot
   Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Pale are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
   Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.

- Wilfred Owen