Forgotten Dead, I Salute You.

    Dawn has flashed up the startled skies,
    Night has gone out beneath the hill
    Many sweet times; before our eyes
    Dawn makes and unmakes about us still
    The magic that we call the rose.
    The gentle history of the rain
    Has been unfolded, traced and lost
    By 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 those
    Last 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 these
    Last year, and who remembers him?

    None remember him: he lies
    In earth of some strange-sounding place,
    Nameless beneath the nameless skies,
    The wind his only chant, the rain
    The only tears upon his face;
    Far and forgotten utterly
    By living man.    Yet such as he
    Have made it possible and sure
    For other lives to have, to be;
    For men to sleep content, secure.
    Lip touches lip and eyes meet eyes
    Because his heart beats not again:
    His rotting, fruitless body lies
    That 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 made
    For strangers; this forgotten dead
    Went out into the night alone.
    There was his body broken for you,
    There was his blood divinely shed
    That in the earth lie lost and dim.
    Eat, drink, and often as you do,
    For whom he died, remember him.