I saw the vision of armies   And I saw, as in noiseless dreams, hundreds of battle flags   Borne through the smoke of the battles   And pierced with missiles, I saw them      And carried, hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody   And at last but a few shreds of the flags left on the staffs   And all in silence   And the staffs all splintered and broken      I saw battle corpses, myriads of them   And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them   I saw the debris and debris of all dead soldiers   But I saw they were not as was thought      They themselves were fully at rest, they suffered not   The living remained and suffered, the mother suffered   And the wife and the child, and the musing comrade suffered   And the armies that remained suffered