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.