They looked on scarred and ruined lands,
On shell-wrecked fields forlorn,
And gave to us, with open hands,
Full fields of yellow corn;
The silence wrought in wood and stone
Whose aisles our fathers trod;
The pines that stand apart, alone,
Like sentinels of God.
With generous hands they paid the price,
Unconscious of the cost,
But we must gauge the sacrifice
By all that they have lost.
The joy of young adventurous ways,
Of keen and undimmed sight,
The eager tramp through sunny days,
The dreamless sleep of night,
The happy hours that come and go,
In youth's untiring quest,
They gave, because they willed it so,
With some light-hearted jest.
No lavish love of future years,
No passionate regret,
No gift of sacrifice or tears
Can ever pay the debt.
Yet if ever you try to express this indebtedness to the wonderful young men
who survive, they turn the whole thing into a jest and tell you, for
example, that only two things really interest them, "Europe and their
stomachs"--nothing in between matters.
[Illustration: PAT (examining fare): "May the divil destroy the Germans!"
SUB: "Well, they don't do you much harm, anyway. You don't get near enough
to 'em."
PAT: "Do they not, thin? Have they not kilt all the half-crown officers and
left nothing but the shillin' ones?"]
Guy Fawkes Day has come and gone without fireworks, pursuant to the Defence
of the Realm Act.
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