Classic Poem

Be sad, be cool, be kind,
Remembering those now dream-dust
Hallowed in the ruts and gullies,
Solemn bones under the smooth blue sea,
Faces war-blown in a falling rain.

Be a brother, if so can be,
To those beyond battle fatigue
Each in his own corner of earth
Or forty fathoms undersea
Beyond all boom of guns,
Beyond any bong of a great bell,
Each with a bosom and number,
Each with a pack of secrets,
Each with a personal dream and doorway,
And over them now the long endless winds
With the low healing song of time,
The hush and sleep murmur of time.
Make your wit a guard and cover.
Sing low, sing high, sing wide.
Let your laughter come free
Remembering looking toward peace:
" We must disenthrall ourselves. "

Be a brother, if so can be,
To those thrown forward
For taking hard-won lines,
For holding hard-won points
And their reward so-so.
Little they care to talk about,
Their pay held in a mute calm,
High-spot memories going unspoken;
What they did being past words,
What they took being hard won.
Be sad, be kind, be cool.
Weep if you must,
And weep, open and shameless,
Before these altars.

There are wounds past words.
There are cripples less broken
Than many who walk whole.
There are dead youths
With wrists of silence
Who keep a vast music
Under their shut lips;
What they did being past words;
Their dreams, like their deaths,
Beyond any smooth and easy telling;
Having given till no more to give.

There is dust alive
With dreams of the Republic,
With dreams of the family of man
Flung wide on a shrinking globe;
With old timetables,
Old maps, old guideposts
Torn into shreds,
Shot into tatters,
Burnt in a fire wind,
Lost in the shambles,
Faded in rubble and ashes.

There is dust alive.
Out of a granite tomb,
Out of a bronze sarcophagus,
Loose from the stone and copper
Steps a white-smoke ghost,
Lifting an authoritative hand
In the name of dreams worth dying for,
In the name of men whose dust breathes
Of those dreams so worth dying for;
What they did being past words,
Beyond all smooth and easy telling.

Be sad, be kind, be cool,
Remembering, under God, a dream-dust
Hallowed in the ruts and gullies,
Solemn bones under the smooth blue sea,
Faces war-blown in a falling rain.
Sing low, sing high, sing wide.
Make your wit a guard and cover.
Let your laughter come free,
Like a help and a brace of comfort.

The earth laughs, the sun laughs
Over every wise harvest of man,
Over man looking toward peace
By the light of the hard old teaching:
" We must disenthrall ourselves. "