Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
To the siding-shed,
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.

[Darkening foreshadows their impending death at the front - a gloomy image. 'Grimly gay' is an oxymoron - they are putting on a brave face but inside they are apprehensive]

Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead.
[the flowers ('wreath and spray) are parting gifts from their loved ones but they are also an image of death. The point is that the men are going to their deaths]

Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
Stood staring hard,
Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
Winked to the guard.
[Here there is a feeling as if bebeath the surface, everyone knows what will happen to them ('nodded' and 'winked' suggest this).]

So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
They were not ours:
We never heard to which front these were sent.
[This suggests that the authorities didn't want to make a big thing about these troops being sent ; they didn't want a lot of publicity. It's almost as if the authorities knew that what they were doing was wrong]

Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
Who gave them flowers.

{[The poet wonders whether one the soldiers ar at the front will now consider the flowers that were given to them as if they were wreaths and that the women were making fun of them]

Shall they return to beatings of great bells
In wild trainloads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May creep back, silent, to still village wells
Up half-known roads.

[Here the poet pictures the return of only a few men who will not be treated with any great repsect or honour - most will die at the front.]

The pace of the poem is slow and measured, reflecting its gloomy subject matter.

Note the rhymes.

不良的习惯会随时阻碍你走向成名、获利和享乐的路上去。 —— 莎士比亚