They have given their lives, with bodies bruised and broken,
Upon their Country's altar they have bled;
They have left, as priceless heritage, a token
That Honor lives forever with the dead.
And the Bugles, as their rich notes rise and fall—
They answer, knowing all.
J. Corson Miller.
THE DEAD
Think you the dead are lonely in that place?
They are companioned by the leaves and grass,
By many a beautiful and vanished face,
By all the strange and lovely things that pass.
Sunsets and dawnings and the starry vast,
The swinging moon, the tracery of trees—
These they shall know more perfectly at last,
They shall be intimate with such as these.
'Tis only for the living Beauty dies,
Fades and drifts from us with too brief a grace,
Beyond the changing tapestry of skies
Where dwells her perfect and immortal face.
For us the passage brief;—the happy dead
Are ever by great beauty visited.
David Morton.
THE UNRETURNING
For us, the dead, though young,
For us, who fought and bled,
Let a last song be sung,
And a last word be said!
Dreams, hopes, and high desires,
That leaven and uplift,
On sacrificial fires
We offered as a gift.
We gave, and gave our all,
In gladness, though in pain;
Let not a whisper fall
That we have died in vain!
Clinton Scollard.