Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. OBLIVION ' Children of Silence and Eternity, They know no season but the end of time.' MARGARET L. WOODS 2f. To the Forgotten "Dead To the forgotten dead, Come, let us drink in silence ere we part. To every fervent yet resolved heart That brought its tameless passion and its tears, Renunciation and laborious years, To lay the deep foundations of our race, To rear its mighty ramparts overhead And light its pinnacles with golden grace. To the unhonoured dead. To the forgotten dead, Whose dauntless hands were stretched to grasp the rein Of Fate and hurl into the void again Her thunder-hoofed horses, rushing blind Earthward along the courses of the wind. Among the stars, along the wind in vain Their souls were scattered and their blood was shed, And nothing, nothing of them doth remain. To the thrice-perished dead. RUDYARD KIPLING 26. Gentlemen-Rankers Tthe legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned, To my brethren in their sorrow overseas, Sings a gentleman of England cleanly bred, machinely crammed, And a trooper of the Empress, if you please. Yea, a trooper of the forces who has run his own six horses, And faith he went the pace and went it blind, And the world was more than kin while he held the ready But to-day the Sergeant's something less than kind. We're poor little lambs who've lost our way, Baa! Baa! Baa! We're little black sheep who've gone astray, Baa-aa-aa ! Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree, Damned from here to Eternity, God ha' mercy on such as we, Baa! Yah! Bah! Oh, it's sweet to sweat through stables, sweet to empty kitchen slops, And it's sweet to hear the tales the troopers tell, To dance with blowzy housemaids at the regimental hops And thrash the cad who says you waltz too well. Y... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.