To One Killed in Action

Levin Daily Chronicle, 7 March 1918, Page 1

To One Killed in Action

You who have lived and known the joy of living, The flush of venture and the high, clear call That bade you forth, that in one ultimate giving Lifted you, godlike, when you lavished all The uawon annals of your prooffeved years, The unsought rapture and. the unguessed tears. Soft where you lie there drifts the big guns' mumble; Close by your side the brown battalions swing; By day and night the transport-wagons rumble; By day and night the whining bullets swing; Now can you hear tho joke that ripples back Through tho loos<o ranks upon the shellscarred track? You who have found the thing beyond all treasure And made it yours in those amazing hours, And set your life to such exalted measure That death, deserting his funereal towers, Walked with you as a brother, kind, but grim Till came the moment when you smiled at him. Flashed there to you no swift and brilliant message, Some tenuous vision of the appointed end, Some divination and departing presage Of that far bourn to which the nations trend When not with blood the shrinking wootls are wet And the rose drapes the crumbling parapet ' —Alan Sullivan, in "Tlio Century Magazine."