| IN fifty years, when peace outshines | |
| Remembrance of the battle lines, | |
| Adventurous lads will sigh and cast | |
| Proud looks upon the plundered past. | |
| On summer morn or winter’s night, | 5 |
| Their hearts will kindle for the fight, | |
| Reading a snatch of soldier-song, | |
| Savage and jaunty, fierce and strong; | |
| And through the angry marching rhymes | |
| Of blind regret and haggard mirth, | 10 |
| They’ll envy us the dazzling times | |
| When sacrifice absolved our earth. | |
| |
| Some ancient man with silver locks | |
| Will lift his weary face to say: | |
| ‘War was a fiend who stopped our clocks | 15 |
| Although we met him grim and gay.’ | |
| And then he’ll speak of Haig’s last drive, | |
| Marvelling that any came alive | |
| Out of the shambles that men built | |
| And smashed, to cleanse the world of guilt. | 20 |
| But the boys, with grin and sidelong glance, | |
| Will think, ‘Poor grandad’s day is done.’ | |
| And dream of lads who fought in France | |
| And lived in time to share the fun. | |
