We pass and leave you lying,
No need
For rhetoric,
For funeral music,
For melancholy bugle calls.
No need for tears now,
No need for regret.
We took our risk with you;
You died,
Yet we live.
We take your nobility,
Salute sadly
For the last time,
Those lines
Of pitiable crosses,
Those solitary mounds,
Those unknown graves,
And turn to live our lives out as we may.
Which of us
Were less fortunate?
Who can tell?
For you there is
Eternal cold silence,
And twilight drooping
In awful desolation
Over those motionless lands.
Eyes no longer bright,
But unseeing-
Forever more.
And us!
To now weep
Over our lost comrade.
Lost silent soldiers,
Who might have died,
We salute you.
