Page:Armistice Day.djvu/300

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278
ARMISTICE DAY

These are military virtues but they are also indispensable civic virtues. You will need them in war—may you be spared it; you will certainly need them every day in peace. And if war comes he who has been faithful to the scout oath and the scout law will be worthy of him who lies here.


THE YOUNG DEAD

BY EDITH WHARTON

Ah, how I pity the young dead who gave
All that they were, and might become, that we
With tired eyes should watch this perfect sea
Re-weave its patterning of silver wave
Round scented cliffs of arbutus and bay.


No more shall any rose along the way,
The myrtled way that wanders to the shore,
Nor jonquil-twinkling meadow any more,
Nor the warm lavender that takes the spray,
Smell only of sea-salt and the sun.


But, through recurring seasons, every one
Shall speak to us with lips the darkness closes,
Shall look at us with eyes that missed the roses,
Clutch us with hands whose work was just begun,
Laid idle now beneath the earth we tread—