From The Sun, May 2, 1915.
Why should we mourn that shot and shell
Are sweeping lives away
When each man has his private hell
And dies anew each day?
Upon the bloody field where death
His thundering summons calls,
The men who face the cannon’s breath
May win to glory’s halls.
Mixed in that elemental strife
Perhaps they may forget
The heartaches that we bear through life,
The sorrow, the regret.
Sweeter by far the lot they choose
Than ours who stay behind,
Who find what we would gain we lose,
Unbound what we would bind.
We envy them the deaths they die,
Our hearts must die each day,
We greet with sad and hopeless eye
Each morn’s returning ray.
They fall, to live forever more
In glory’s brightest page,
We live in sorrow to deplore
The bars around our cage.
The gods on high, if gods there be
To comfort or condemn,
Shall, if they judge with equity,
Lament for us, not them.
Leave a Reply