Forgotten Dead, I Salute You Analysis

Dawn has flashed up the startled skies,

Night has gone out beneath the hill

Many sweet times; before our eyes

Dawn makes and unmakes about us still

The magic that we call the rose.

The gentle history of the rain

Has been unfolded, traced and lost

By the sharp finger-tips of frost;

Birds in the hawthorn build again;

The hare makes soft her secret house;

The wind at tourney comes and goes,

Spurring the green, unharnessed boughs;

The moon has waxed fierce and waned dim:

He knew the beauty of all those

Last year, and who remembers him?



Love sometimes walks the waters still,

Laughter throws back her radiant head;

Utterly beauty is not gone,

And wonder is not wholly dead.

The starry, mortal world rolls on;

Between sweet sounds and silences,

With new, strange wines her beakers brim:

He lost his heritage with these

Last year, and who remembers him?



None remember him: he lies

In earth of some strange-sounding place,

Nameless beneath the nameless skies,

The wind his only chant, the rain

The only tears upon his face;

Far and forgotten utterly

By living man. Yet such as he

Have made it possible and sure

For other lives to have, to be;

For men to sleep content, secure.

Lip touches lip and eyes meet eyes

Because his heart beats not again:

His rotting, fruitless body lies

That sons may grow from other men.



He gave, as Christ, the life he hadÑ

The only life desired or known;

The great, sad sacrifice was made

For strangers; this forgotten dead

Went out into the night alone.

There was his body broken for you,

There was his blood divinely shed

That in the earth lie lost and dim.

Eat, drink, and often as you do,

For whom he died, remember him.

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