Battle-Retrospect, and Other Poems/The Dead to Wilson
THE DEAD TO WILSON.
Guardian of our honour whom the blind call slaves,
Pleader of our mission in the courts of time,
Thanks to you our lot was not the cheap-held graves
Of history’s mercenaries, nor their ghastly pantomime.
We ventured to the carnage with a blatant self-applause,
We started as they bade us like the simples of the past,
And but for you who blazoned out the virtue in our cause
We also would have died the fools of avarice and caste.
You saved us from that holocaust renewed once more to greed,
You saved us from the blind and beastly grapple in the mists,
You called us to a battle on the heights, we saw you lead
The faithless and despairing hosts to the eternal lists,
Where unseen witnesses gave strength and we fought side by
side
(We who had been the ne'er-do-wells, the alien and the lost)
With all great-hearted heroes who have battled and have died,
Our comrades by the vision that you set before the host.