POETRY.
THE LUCKY ONES.
I COM) understand your sorrow for the living—
Why should you be grieving for those that are dead? How do we know that they are not the lucky ones, Those young plucky ones, whose last words are said?
Boys from the playing-field, boys from the plowing-field, They had no pretty one to love them, you say, Life had just started when they departed, Life was all to-morrow—and they died to-day.
So they left unfinished the songs they were writing And went to the fighting—their hope still intact; Their songs were the rarest, their first love the fairest, Life was a dream still, and not yet grown a fact.
" It's a long, long way !" was the song they were singing, As they went swinging along with their load, It was further than they guessed, but they trudged it with the best And took their dreams and left us on the empty road.
Their frail young philosophy was still a haunting splendour, Life a perfumed wonder too delicate to touch : Are they not the lucky ones, those poor, dead, plucky ones? Though their joys were shadows—do they miss so much?
Rosstesx L. GRAVES.
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