They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
we will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
they sit no more at familiar tables at home;
they have no lot in our labor of the day-time;
they sleep beyond England’s
foam.
But where our desires and our hopes profound,
felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
to the innermost heart of their own land they are known
as stars are known to the night.
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
moving in marches on the heavenly plain;
as the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
to the end, to the end, they remain.
(1914)
--Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)
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