From The Sun, May 2, 1915.

Why should we mourn that shot and shell
    Are sweeping lives away
When each man has his private hell
    And dies anew each day?

Upon the bloody field where death
    His thundering summons calls,
The men who face the cannon’s breath
    May win to glory’s halls.

Mixed in that elemental strife
    Perhaps they may forget
The heartaches that we bear through life,
    The sorrow, the regret.

Sweeter by far the lot they choose
    Than ours who stay behind,
Who find what we would gain we lose,
    Unbound what we would bind.

We envy them the deaths they die,
    Our hearts must die each day,
We greet with sad and hopeless eye
    Each morn’s returning ray.

They fall, to live forever more
    In glory’s brightest page,
We live in sorrow to deplore
    The bars around our cage.

The gods on high, if gods there be
    To comfort or condemn,
Shall, if they judge with equity,
    Lament for us, not them.