Out of the Silence

And what may we say to the dead
Through the silence unbroken,
Pausing, and bowing the head
As a form and a token?
What may we hear, if we list
To that spirit still crying
Out of the deepening mist
Of the slow years dying?

The life of the nation runs on,
And in striving and getting
The pain and the terror have gone;
We are done with regretting.
But are we, too, done with the debt? . . .
So the silence has spoken
And urgently, lest we forget,
Is the pact to be broken?

“We have given ambition,” they said,
“And a youth’s high dreaming,
That ever the flame may be fed
Where we fed it, a-gleaming.
We have given our all to the strife
For an ideal splendid;
And you, who still tarry with life—
Are you keeping it tended?

“We have given to country and God
All that might be given;
And gladly returned to the sod,
Rewarded and shriven,
We have yielded our bodies,” they said,
“To be battered and broken.
Are you keeping the pact?” spoke the
dead . . . .
And the silence has spoken!

“Den”
Herald, 11 November 1932