• Author: B-8266
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume V
• Page Number:
• Date: 3 27 1918
• Tags:
• poetry
• patriotism

IN REMEMBRANCE

TO CAPTAIN DAVID FALLON, BRITITH ARMY

MARCH, 10, 1918.

Captain, the thudding guns we here Calling through the day, and year; Muttering persistently Calling in the morning’s gray; Calling at the close of day, Uttering insistently: A call, to us who have no name, To a reeling deck, or battle-plain, To expiate a life of shame.

Captain, the fields of France are red, With blood of the best that England bred; And mingle in that ruddy tide, Is blood of men alike to us, Who lifted faces from the dust, And knew the Glory, ere they died, Felon they were, and parasite; And yet their blind eyes saw the light They wrongly lived, but died aright. —

Captain our souls are dark with sin; And oft 2 devil dwells therein; And yet one spark of living fire, Dwells in the breast of everyone, And at the throbblng of the drum, Leaps to the ur ge of our desire; That we should stand in Flanders mud, And dare to stay the German flood, With a barrier of our hearts blood.

Captain, the guns are never still, Calling all peoples to the kill; Yet must we linger here: Eating anxious hearts away, With longing for that splendid fray: It is not death we fear. Rather we fear, in days to come, To hear men say; their task well done— “Where were you when we fought the Hun?”

—B 8266.