A young soldier thanks God for matching his generation with the hour of war, which has shaken them awake from a dull, compromised existence. The world left behind is old, cold, and weary, full of half-hearted people, sordid songs, and hollow love. In contrast, the speaker feels a surge of clean, sharpened power, like swimmers diving into purifying water. War offers a release from shame and sickness: a place where the only wounds are to the body, not the spirit. Even agony has an end, and death itself is simply the last companion and adversary. The mood is eerily serene, almost joyful. There’s a laughing, untroubled peace at the heart of this vision — a deep gratitude for having found something absolute, however brutal, that scrubs away the messiness of modern life. It’s a startlingly romantic embrace of sacrifice.
I. Peace — Summary
Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour, And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping, With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power, To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping, Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary, Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move, And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary, And all the little emptiness of love!
Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there, Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending, Naught broken save this body, lost but breath; Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there But only agony, and that has ending; And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.