Poem by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

For a War Memorial

(Suggested inscription probably 
not suggested by the committee)

The hucksters haggle in the mart
The cars and carts go by;
Senates and schools go droning on;
For dead things cannot die.

A storm stooped on the place of tombs
With bolts to blast and rive;
But these be names of many men
The lightning found alive.

If usurers rule and rights decay
And visions view once more
Great Carthage like a golden shell
Gape hollow on the shore,

Still to the last of crumbling time
Upon this stone be read
How many men of England died
To prove they were not dead. 

1. The Modern Manichee
2. The Logical Vegetarian
3. On the Disastrous Spread of Aestheticism in all Classes
4. Whenever William Cobbett
5. Blessed Are the Peacemakers

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