<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="center" class="head">"A. B. V.: By R. V."</h1><div class="stanza"><p class="line">I BOW my head, O brother, brother, brother,</p><p class="line">But may not grudge you that were all to me.</p><p class="line">Should any one lament when this our mother</p><p class="line">Mourns for so many sons on land and sea?</p><p class="line">God of the love which makes two lives as one,</p><p class="line">Give also strength to see that England's will bedone.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Let it be done, yea down to the last tittle,</p><p class="line">Up to the fulness of all sacrifice.</p><p class="line">Our dead feared this alone-to give too little</p><p class="line">Then shall the living murmur at the price?</p><p class="line">The hands withdrawn from ours to grasp the plough</p><p class="line">Would suffer only if the furrow faltered now.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Know, fellow-mourners-be our cross too grievous</p><p class="line">That One who sealed our symbol with His blood</p><p class="line">Vouchsafes the Vision which shall never leave us:</p><p class="line">Those humble crosses in the Flanders mud.</p><p class="line">And think there rests all-hallowed, in each grave,</p><p class="line">A life given freely for the world He died to save.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">And far ahead, dim marching generations</p><p class="line">That never felt and cannot guess our pain</p><p class="line">-Though history count nothing less than nations,</p><p class="line">And fame forget where grass has grown again-</p><p class="line">Shall yet remember that the world is free.</p><p class="line">It is enough. For this is immortality.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">I raise my head, O brother, brother, brother.</p><p class="line">The organ sobs for triumph to my heart.</p><p class="line">What! who will think that ransomed Earth can smother</p><p class="line">Her own great soul of which you are a part ?</p><p class="line">The requiem music dies as if it knew</p><p class="line">The inviolate peace where 'tis already well withyou.</p></div>(The <em>Spectator</em>, June 5, 1915</body></html> · Great War