OUR YOUNG DEAD. ("They knew their duty, and they went.")
[TO TRII EDITOR OP THE "SPROTATOR.".1
Sin,—In our Universities, and everywhere, older men are thinking daily of the spirit in which our gallant youths, one after the other, have said farewell to their teachers and friends when leaving England for the field of battle, where many of them have bravely fallen. There wore no loud heroics when they went: simply, "I know I ought to go, and I am going"; or, " I want to do my bit." The following four short lines (they are not poetry, nor even polished verse) attempt to suggest in the fewest and plainest words some faint shadow of the feeling graven deep on many a mind by the remembrance of those who have thus gone, and most especially of those who will not now return :— No hate was theirs, no thirst for fame, When forth to death by honour sent.
Life beckoned sweet ; the groat call came ;
They knew their duty, and they went.
—I am, Sir, &c.,
()ANIIRENSIII.
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