and only pray that when his hour comes there may be no stain upon his honour.
This is the end of Charles Masefield's song of his 'Sailing for Flanders':
We have put life away and spurn the ways of the living;
We have broken with the old selves who gathered and got,
And are free with the freedom of men who have not;
We partake the heroic fervours of giving and again giving.
Was it only for death we were born of our mothers?
Only for Death created the dear love of our wives?
Only for death and in vain we endeavoured our lives?
Yea, life was given to be given; march onward, my brothers.
Which matches the earlier mood in which he took up arms, as he expresses it in Enlisted, or The Recruits:
Humbly, O England, we offer what is of little worth,
Just our bodies and souls and everything else we have;
But thou with thy holy cause wilt hallow our common earth,
Giving us strength in the battle—and peace, if need, in the grave....
