Poems (Stuart)/Forgotten Dead, I Salute You
FORGOTTEN DEAD, I SALUTE YOU.
Dawn has flashed up the startled skies,Night has gone out beneath the hillMany sweet times; before our eyesDawn makes and unmakes about us stillThe magic that we call the rose.The gentle history of the rainHas been unfolded, traced and lostBy the sharp finger-tips of frost;Birds in the hawthorn build again;The hare makes soft her secret house;The wind at tourney comes and goes,Spurring the green, unharnessed boughs;The moon has waxed fierce and waned dim:He knew the beauty of all thoseLast year, and who remembers him?
Love sometimes walks the waters still,Laughter throws back her radiant head;Utterly beauty is not gone,And wonder is not wholly dead.The starry, mortal world rolls on; Between sweet sounds and silences,With new, strange wines her beakers brim:He lost his heritage with theseLast year, and who remembers him?
None remember him: he liesIn earth of some strange-sounding place,Nameless beneath the nameless skies,The wind his only chant, the rainThe only tears upon his face;Far and forgotten utterlyBy living man. Yet such as heHave made it possible and sureFor other lives to have, to be;For men to sleep content, secure.Lip touches lip and eyes meet eyesBecause his heart beats not again:His rotting, fruitless body liesThat sons may grow from other men.
He gave, as Christ, the life he had—The only life desired or known;The great, sad sacrifice was madeFor strangers; this forgotten deadWent out into the night alone.There was his body broken for you, There was his blood divinely shedThat in the earth lie lost and dim.Eat, drink, and often as you do,For whom he died, remember him.