Their hearts remain small-drawn.
Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle
Now long since ironed,
Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.
IV
Happy the soldier home, with not a notion
How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,
And many sighs are drained.
Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:
His days are worth forgetting more than not.
He sings along the march
Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,
The long, forlorn, relentless tread
From larger day to huger night.
V
We wise, who with a thought besmirch
A triplet of accumulated adjectives gives emphasis, drags out the line and mirrors the consistent and monotonous marching of the soldiers. Note the elongated,  assonantly rhyming  vowels — “o"s in "long, forlorn” and “e"s in "relentless tread”.