They shall not grow old, as those that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them....
We will remember them...."
Elgar had set it all to music—in a symphony that left no sigh unbreathed, no tear unshed, no glory undimmed, no hope unrealized. As it was there in the beautiful words, so was it visioned there in the music—the drums of War, the peril, the supreme sacrifice, the supernal deed, Death, beatification, balm! How that symphony orchestra played it and that choir sang it! And all England was listening, singing, weeping, remembering, carrying on and on.
The pale young man in the .wheel chair—he knew, he had been there, a clean-limbed youth—the banker, now become an old man leaning against the coping with both hands holding his face against the vision of a son and heir now somewhere in Flanders fields—the charwoman who had been a mother then—the draper whose youth had been robbed of its four most promising years in a prison camp—and two thousand others in this ancient cathedral, and twenty million more in other churches throughout England chanting:
