300 ONE THOUSAND FAMOUS THINGS
Surely They Sleep Content
SURELY they sleep content, our valiant dead,
Fallen untimely in the savage strife :
They have but followed whither duty Ied5
To find a fuller life.
Who, then, are we to grudge the bitter price
Of this our land Inviolate through the years,
Or mar the splendour of their sacrifice
That is too high for tears ?
God grant we fail not at the test—that when
We take, mayhap, our places in the fray,
Come life, come death, we quit ourselves like men,
The peers of such as they.
Written by Arthur Lewis Jenkins, a Marlborough boy,
of those Marlborough boys killed in the war before him
There Is No Fitter End
THEKE is no fitter end than this,
No need is now to yearn or sigh ;
We know the glory that is his,
The glory that can never die.
Surely we knew it all before ;
Knew all along that he was made
For a swift radiant morning, for
A sacrificing swift nightshade.
Written by Charles Sorley, a Marlborough boy, of Sidney Clay-
ton Woodroffe, a Marlborough boy killed in the war before him
How Long, 0 Lord ?
How long, O Lord, how long, before the flood
Of crimson-welling carnage shall abate ?
From sodden plains in West and East the blood
Of kindly men steams up in mists of hate.
Polluting Thy clean air ; and nations great
In reputation of the arts that bind
The world with hopes of heaven, sink to the state
Of brute barbarians, whose ferocious mind
Gloats o'er the bloody havoc of their kind,
Not knowing love or mercy. Lord, how long
Shall Satan in high places lead the blind
To battle for the passions of the strong ?
Oh, touch Thy children's hearts that they may know
Hate their most hateful, pride their deadliest, foe.
Robert Palmer