To R A A

Was it not a great end? Wrote your Philip, with a story Of a great deed, a great death-- Not foreseeing his own glory And his budding laurel-wreath-- In the last words he should send. Philip's followed Alan's lead. They are gone into the night With the great heroes of old, With the stars, the stars they are bright; They are warm; they are not cold. They live: they are not dead. But the silence aches. O friend In the darkness, cold and stricken, For anodyne, antidote, Tell your dead heart, that it quicken, The last words that Philip wrote: 'Was it not a great end ?' A great end!