Poems (Stuart)/Forgotten Dead, I Salute You

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FORGOTTEN DEAD, I SALUTE YOU.
Dawn has flashed up the startled skies,Night has gone out beneath the hillMany sweet times; before our eyesDawn makes and unmakes about us stillThe magic that we call the rose.The gentle history of the rainHas been unfolded, traced and lostBy 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 thoseLast 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 theseLast year, and who remembers him?
None remember him: he liesIn earth of some strange-sounding place,Nameless beneath the nameless skies,The wind his only chant, the rainThe only tears upon his face;Far and forgotten utterlyBy living man. Yet such as heHave made it possible and sureFor other lives to have, to be;For men to sleep content, secure.Lip touches lip and eyes meet eyesBecause his heart beats not again:His rotting, fruitless body liesThat 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 madeFor strangers; this forgotten deadWent out into the night alone.There was his body broken for you, ​There was his blood divinely shedThat in the earth lie lost and dim.Eat, drink, and often as you do,For whom he died, remember him.
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