Memorial Room
How many halls like this, in schools like this,
Display to students' unobserving eyes,
Inscribed on oak or marble, or engrossed
On ornamented vellum, rank on rank,
The hundred-year-old names of boys like them
Enrolled in an academy of war,
A university of slaughter, where
A new curriculum of horror taught
Their generation too soon how to die?
Their parents, teachers, friends they left behind
Committed them, in what they built, to us
Who could not mourn or cherish them, but might
Renew their memories, preserve their hopes,
For youths whose anthems sound no note of doom.
