THE LUCKY ONES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12569, 5 March 1919, Page 7

THE LUCKY ONES.

I could understand your sorrow for the living— Why should vou bo grieving for those that are dead? How do wo know that they ore not tho lucky ones, Those young plucky ones, whose last words are said? Boy* from tho playing field, boys from the ploughing field, They had no pretty one to love them, you Life had just started when they departed, Life was all to-morrow—and they died today. So they left unfinished the songs they were writing And went to the fighting—their hope atill intact; Their songs were the rarest, their first love the fairest, Life was a dream still, not yet grown a fact. v< 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 hfs’t, And took their dreams and 1 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 tho lucky ones, those poor, dead, plucky ones? Though their joys wore shadows, do they miss so much? —Ro sal eon L. Graves, in the "Spectator.”