A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919/A Harrow Grave in Flanders

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A HARROW GRAVE IN FLANDERS

HERE in the marshland, past the battered bridge,
One of a hundred grains untimely sown,
Here, with his comrades of the hard-won ridge,
He rests unknown.


His horoscope had seemed so plainly drawn,—
School triumphs, earned apace in work and play;
Friendships at will; then love's delightful dawn
And mellowing day;


Home fostering hope; some service to the State;
Benignant age; then the long tryst to keep
Where in the yew-tree shadow congregate
His fathers sleep.


Was here the one thing needful to distil
From life's alembic, through this holier fate,
The man's essential soul, the hero will?
We ask; and wait.