‘Here war is harmless like a monument’  15103

Locations in Harold's Library

• The New Oxford Book of War Poetry (book)
• W. H. Auden: Collected Poems (book)
  • page 189
  • in "1933-38"

This work has the following connections with other works:

• ‘Here war is simple like a monument’ • 'simple' changed to 'harmless' in the reworking of the sonnet from In Time of War into part of Sonnets from China. Other changes:
  • line 2: 'a telephone is speaking to a man;' to 'a telephone is talking to a man;'
  • line 3: 'assert' to 'declare'
  • line 7: 'and miss their wives' to 'who miss their wives'
  • line 9: 'But ideas can be true' to 'Yet ideas can be true,'
  • lines 10 and 11: 'And we can watch a thousand faces / Made active by one lie:' to 'For we have seen a myriad faces / Ecstatic from one lie,'
  • lines 13-14: '... now: / Nanking; Dachau.' to '... now. / Nanking. Dachau.

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