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Home  »  A Book of Women’s Verse  »  The Soldier’s Death

J. C. Squire, ed. A Book of Women’s Verse. 1921.

By Anne, Countess of Winchilsea (1660–1720)

The Soldier’s Death

TRAIL all your pikes, dispirit every drum,

March in a slow procession from afar,

Ye silent, ye dejected men of war!

Be still the hautboys, and the flute be dumb!

Display no more, in vain, the lofty banner;

For see! where on the bier before ye lies

The pale, the fall’n, the untimely sacrifice

To your mistaken shrine, to your false idol Honour.