| |
| NO more old England will they see— | |
| Those men who’ve died for you and me. | |
| |
| So lone and cold they lie; but we, | |
| We still have life; we still may greet | |
| Our pleasant friends in home and street; | 5 |
| We still have life, are able still | |
| To climb the turf of Bignor Hill, | |
| To see the placid sheep go by, | |
| To hear the sheep-dog’s eager cry, | |
| To feel the sun, to taste the rain, | 10 |
| To smell the Autumn’s scents again | |
| Beneath the brown and gold and red | |
| Which old October’s brush has spread, | |
| To hear the robin in the lane, | |
| To look upon the English sky. | 15 |
| |
| So young they were, so strong and well, | |
| Until the bitter summons fell— | |
| Too young to die. | |
| Yet there on foreign soil they lie, | |
| So pitiful, with glassy eye | 20 |
| And limbs all tumbled anyhow: | |
| Quite finished, now. | |
| |
| On every heart—lest we forget— | |
| Secure at home—engrave this debt! | |
| |
| Too delicate is flesh to be | 25 |
| The shield that nations interpose | |
| ’Twixt red Ambition and his foes— | |
| The bastion of Liberty. | |
| So beautiful their bodies were, | |
| Built with so exquisite a care: | 30 |
| So young and fit and lithe and fair. | |
| The very flower of us were they, | |
| The very flower, but yesterday! | |
| Yet now so pitiful they lie, | |
| Where love of country bade them hie | 35 |
| To fight this fierce Caprice—and die. | |
| All mangled now, where shells have burst, | |
| And lead and steel have done their worst; | |
| The tender tissues ploughed away, | |
| The years’ slow processes effaced: | 40 |
| The Mother of us all—disgraced. | |
| |
| And some leave wives behind, young wives; | |
| Already some have launched new lives: | |
| A little daughter, little son— | |
| For thus this blundering world goes on. | 45 |
| But never more will any see | |
| The old secure felicity, | |
| The kindnesses that made us glad | |
| Before the world went mad. | |
| They’ll never hear another bird, | 50 |
| Another gay or loving word— | |
| Those men who lie so cold and lone, | |
| Far in a country not their own; | |
| Those men who died for you and me, | |
| That England still might sheltered be | 55 |
| And all our lives go on the same | |
| (Although to live is almost shame). | |
| |
