THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY
James L.S. Carter
And so, ten years have passed, ten long sad years,
Ten Winters and ten Summers and ten Springs,
Ten Seasons of the leaf-world's downwardings
And all the gloom of frost and dead flower tears.
Frost in our hearts too, frost like little spears
That brittly cool, break, shatter; battle-ings
In the war-service that Survival brings
To harm the Spirit with the coldest fears.
I daily hear the humour of your voice
In which our childhood vagaries I trace.
I nightly wait the outline of your form
And wish that it still wore the body warm.
So melancholy are these final days
That I can wish we'd not been brother-boys---
Sacred the mem'ry we commemorate!
Sacred the life that is so sadly gone!
And sacred is the annivers'ry-date
On which a melancholy sun did dawn.
That day, I little knew what tragedy
Awaited all its mis'ry to inflict
And devastate the remnant family,
Awaited the bereaved ones to afflict.
And sacred too the bonds which bind us still
Long may they last! Long may they never die!
We live now and should love each other till
The day we reach our immortality.
And even then our sacred hope and love
Should long outlast the grave and graveside grove.
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