I mind they told me on a noisy hill <br />I sat and disbelieved, and shook my head: <br />“Impossible! Impossible! but still <br />these other men have died, and others bled”. <br />Knees clasped, I sat and thought, unheeding war. <br />The trees, the winds, the streets came back to me; <br />The laughter of his eyes, his home afar, <br />The memory of his hopes, his buoyancy, <br />His dreams, his jests, his moods of wistfulness, <br />The quaintness of his speech, his favourite song; <br />And this, -and this the end so pitiless! <br />The man we knew! The man we knew so long! <br />- To die-be dead-not move, and this was he! <br />I rose and oiled my rifle musingly.<br /><br />Leon Gellert<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/one-who-died-in-memory-of-e-w-t-s/
