Volunteer

While searching for the worser part of valor,
(and honestly, not knowing where to look),
his face now the characteristic pallor
of one who's studied warfare from a book,
but now, confronted with its truer function,
(dictating, as it does, its truer form),
arriving at the well expected junction,
so common, it must surely be the norm,
that flight is the more natural expression
(and this is where it's apropos to cite
the quote that deftly harnesses discretion
when calculating whether fight or flight):
the better part of valor, but too late
to ransom or redeem his great estate.