Should cease to be.
They will not die, the victorious and the slain,
Sleeping in foreign soil,
They gave their lives, but to the world is the gain
Of their sad toil.
They are not dead, the soldier and the sailor,
Fallen for Freedom’s sake;
They merely sleep with faces that are paler
Until they wake.
The most lilting example of Canadian inspirational war verse is Douglas Durkin’s The Fighting Men of Canada. It is spirited and inspiriting. The colloquial diction of the refrains charges it with veracity, vividness, and with ‘the punch’ which the London critic, Mr. E. B. Osborn, desiderates in the content of what are, in his view, the only ‘true war poems,’ namely, ‘song-pictures of the campaigns and of soldiers’ life’:—