Flower of youth, poems in war time/To R. A. A.

by Katharine Tynan

 

TO R. A. A.

(20th October 1914. 24th February 1915)

Was it not a great end?
Wrote your Philip, with a story
Of a great deed, a great death—
Not foreseeing his own glory
And his budding laurel-wreath—
In the last words he should send.

Philip's followed Alan's lead.
They are gone into the night
With the great heroes of old,
With the stars, the stars they are bright;
They are warm; they are not cold.
They live: they are not dead.

But the silence aches. O friend
In the darkness, cold and stricken,
For anodyne, antidote,
Tell your dead heart, that it quicken,
The last words that Philip wrote:
"Was it not a great end?" A great end!