17 MARCH 1933, Page 17

The Only Answer

RETARDED into history's marble eyes

Is their quick challenge and ability ; All the expression of their enterprise, The fierce, the rapt, the generous and the free.

Behold their monument ; no more is now to see.

Travel this cool white day across this plain, Count farms and haycocks, think of dead event, Count all these graves, count every pang and pain Which put them here: but life will not relent.

Hardly the deathmask held one hour their last intent.

Action, eternal fire I from brain to brain, From race to race, and age to age on-leaping, Leaves the charred embers to the steady rain ; Over the skeleton the grass comes creeping, And life's too short for wondering, too aflame for weeping.

EDMUND BLUNDEN.