For A War Memorial

written by


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(Suggested Inscription probably not selected by the Committee.)


  The hucksters haggle in the mart
  The cars and carts go by;
  Senates and schools go droning on;
  For dead things cannot die.

  A storm stooped on the place of tombs
  With bolts to blast and rive;
  But these be names of many men
  The lightning found alive.

  If usurers rule and rights decay
  And visions view once more
  Great Carthage like a golden shell
  Gape hollow on the shore,

  Still to the last of crumbling time
  Upon this stone be read
  How many men of England died
  To prove they were not dead.

© Gilbert Keith Chesterton