Cycles?

This is just a quick thought, but I've been reading a lot of WW1 poetry and letters from soldiers and they seem really relevant to today. Take away the date and they could be about the world today. So I was thinking, what does that imply about cycles of impending death? Because of war and, basically, humanity, people have thought the end of the world was at hand for over the past 100 years. It might be interesting to juxtapose some of this text with more modern text.

Here is one that really got me

Anthem for a Doomed Youth
Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
-Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering riffles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them, no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mouring save the choirs-
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

sept.-oct. 1917

even maybe just taking certain images or lines from older poems to use. The last line especially calls into mind the cycle of hate and destruction that exists - a kind of end each day only to face it again the next.

I also like this couplet from a Robert Graves Poem from 1938 - Recalling War

When learnedly the future we devote
To yet more boastful visions of despair.