Edmund Blunden, "Report on Experience"

Report on ExperienceI have been young, and now am not too old;And I have seen the righteous forsaken,His health, his honour and his quality taken.This is not what we were formerly told.I have seen a green country, useful to the race,Knocked silly with guns and mines, its villages vanished,Even the last rat and the last kestrel banished --God bless us all, this was peculiar grace.I knew Seraphina;