On Passing The New Menin Gate
Who will remember, passing through this Gate,
The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones.
Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.
Paid are it's dim defenders by this Pomp;
Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,
The armies that 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 crime.
The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones.
Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.
Paid are it's dim defenders by this Pomp;
Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,
The armies that 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 crime.