Will Streets: A Soldier’s Funeral (Poem)

A Soldier’s Funeral

No splendid show of solemn funeral rite,
No stricken mourners following his bier,
No peal of organ reaching thro’ his night,
Is rendered him whom now we bury here.

‘Tis but a soldier stricken in the fight,
A youth who flung his passion into life,
Flung scorn at Death, fought true for Freedom’s might,
Till Death did close his vision in the strife.

No splendid rite is here – yet lay him low,
Ye comrades of his youth he fought beside,
Close where the winds do sigh and wild flowers grow,
Where the sweet brook doth babble by his side.
No splendour, yet we lay him tenderly
To rest, his requiem the artillery.

John William (Will) Streets
(1886 –1916)
A Soldier’s Funeral
• fleursdumal.nl magazine

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