C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Amelia Josephine Burr (18781968)
Poems of the Great War: Kitcheners March
N
Nor the wailing of the fife.
Trumpets blaring to the charge
Were the music of his life.
Let the music of his death
Be the feet of marching men;
Let his heart a thousandfold
Take the field again.
Of his quiet faithfulness,
England, raise your hero’s cairn!
He is worthy of no less.
Stone by stone, in silence laid,
Singly, surely, let it grow.
He whose living was to serve,
Would have had it so.
For the mighty sea to keep.
There’s a spirit cannot die
While a heart is left to leap
In the land he gave his all,
Steel alike to praise and hate.
He has saved the life he spent,
Death has struck too late.
Nor the wailing of the fife—
Trumpets blaring to the charge
Were the music of his life.
Let the music of his death
Be the feet of marching men!
Let his heart a thousandfold
Take the field again!