Who will remember, passing through this Gate, The unheroic Dead who fed the guns? Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, -- Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones? Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own. Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp; Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone, The armies who endured that sullen swamp. Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride "Their name liveth for ever," the Gateway claims. Was ever an immolation so belied As these intolerably nameless names? Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CONTRA MORTEM: THE LEAVES by HAYDEN CARRUTH KEEPING UP WITH THE SIGNS by MADELINE DEFREES ABOVE AND WITHIN by DAVID IGNATOW LITTLE SON by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON POSSUM SONG (A WARNING) by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON SURFACES AND MASKS; 6 by CLARENCE MAJOR |