AN EPILOGUE

For two years you went

Through all the worst of it,

Men fell around you, but you did not fall.

On the Somme when the air was a sea

Of contesting flashes and clouds of smoke,

Your gunners fell fast but you got never a scratch.

And once when you watched from a village tower

( At Longueval, was it? ) between our guns and theirs

As men fought in the houses below,

A shell from an English battery came

And tore a hole in the tower below you,

But you were not hurt and remained observing.

And now,

A casual shell has come

And pierced your head,

And the men who were with you, uninjured,

Carried you back,

And you died on the way.