Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds—
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved,—still warm,—too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?
The last two lines form a  rhetorical question . But there is no answer and the narrator is forced to accept the futility of trying to rouse his comrade. There is a hint of anger implied in “fatuous”, meaning mindless or foolish. It implies that it was pointless for the sun to warm and awaken the Earth, if humans destroy each other in war. The tone reflects the cynicism many Europeans felt in the years following World War One. 
 In  On the Origins of War  (1995), Donald Kagan explains, “the dominant mood of Europeans in the  late nineteenth century was confident and hopeful.”  This was due to centuries of cultural, scientific, political and industrial progress.  As Kagan writes, “The Great War … shattered that mood and the world that had given rise to it” (81-2). 
 For other literary evidence of the post-WWI mindset, see  Yeats' “The Second Coming” , and  TS Eliot’s “The Waste Land” . In Eliot’s  “The Hollow Men”  he writes; 
 This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper. 
 Humankind can’t even manage anything as grand as a ‘bang’; instead life just fizzles out pathetically with a ‘whimper’. 
 Though the rhyme-scheme is this poem is that of a  sonnet, here the rhyme is sometimes ‘imperfect’ — a device known as  half-rhyme  or  slant-rhyme . For example, ‘snow’ and ‘now’ are slant-rhymed. This may be a subtle way of implying discord and disillusionment. The confidence of definite, perfect rhyme is exchanged for uncertainly and unease.  The meaning of civilisation is entirely in question. 
 NB To illustrate the above point see Jessie Pope’s naïve and  patriotic poems  in support of the war and encouraging volunteering. Her simplistic views are matched by the equally naïve, plodding verse, with their perfect but unsubtle rhymes. 
 Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played, The red crashing game of a fight? Who’ll grip and tackle the job unafraid? And who thinks he’d rather sit tight?  Who’ll toe the line for the signal to ‘Go!’?