For Valour

Hail to you, comrades, who have won,     Where the torn lines of battle run     By tattered town and ruined mead,     The honour that men give with pride     To those who, daffing death aside,     Have done the valorous deed.     And has the war, then, brought to birth,     As flowers that spring from western earth     At summons of the pelting rain,     The courage that can force its way,     And hold the shadowing wings at bay,     And smile at lingering pain?     And is it true that only now     Life lifts from her heroic brow     The smothering shroud of deadly peace,     And laughs to sniff the morning air,     And bids a thousand bonfires flare     The news of her release?     Hells throat may swallow down its lie,     For men knew how to live and die     And take the gifts of motley fate,     Before the fiends of fear and greed,     Clasping, engendered from their seed     The hissing brood of hate.     Are they not sightless fools who crave     The sombre splendours of the grave     To prove that man is more than dust;     Who dabble fingers in the side     Of him who lives because he died,     Believing, when they must?