Stewardship Armistice Day, 1930

No longer grieving, we look down the years
And, for remembrance, bend again the head,
Recalling other scenes and olden fears,
And war, that as some ugly dream appears,
And all that bitter glory of the dead.
So, yearly, as the requiem sounds again,
We bend the head to speak a brief “Amen.”

But we have said: “Their memory shall not fade,
These patient young who were the sacrifice.”
And we have said: “Let living hearts be made
To shrines for those who went so unafraid,
So willingly to pay that fearful price.”
Yet we, with this, and this upon the lip,
How is it with us in our stewardship?”

Our stewardship. Did these whom we now mourn
Give nought into our hands to be a trust?
Has vainly all their suffering been borne
That we might linger here to be the scorn
Of nations, and our pride a thing of dust?
Owe we no duty to them who are gone,
Voicing the Anzacs’ watchwords, “Carry on!”

Remembrance were a vain and hollow thing,
Our grief a grinning mockery of grief;
Vicarious fame, a sham to which we cling,
If back into these heroes’ graves we fling
The torch of their once glorious belief.
What has a land forsworn to do with pride
If honor died when they who won it died?

But we have said: “We never shall forget.”
Now comes the testing time; and in our hands —
While there remains one day for proving yet
Enough of men remain to meet the debt —
Rests all for which Australia’s honor stands.
This, or else Anzac is a tarnished name,
And long gone glory has begotten shame.

“C. J. Dennis”
Herald, 11 November 1930, p6