They 're bringing their recent dead!—No pomp, no show:
A dingy khaki crowd—his friends, his own.
I too would like—(God, how that wind does moan!)
To be laid down by friends: it 's sweetest so!
A young life, as I take it; just a lad—
(How cold it blows, and that grey sky how sad!)
And yet: 'For Country'—so a man should die:
Comrade unknown, good rest to you!—Good-bye!
They 're burying their dead!—I wonder now:
A wife?—or mother? Mother it must be,
In some trim home that fronts the English sea
(A sea-coast country; that the badges show).
And she?—I sense her grief, I feel her tears:
This, then, the garnered harvest of my years!
And he?—'For Country, dear, a man must die.'
Comrade unknown, good rest to you!—Good-bye!
Walter Wilkinson was born at Bristol in 1886. His father, who was chief manager of goods traffic on the Great Western Railway, was an inventive engineer. His mother died when he was a child, and on the death of his father he was introduced to Mrs. William Sharpe, the widow of the well-known author, by Sir Alexander Nelson Hood (Duke of Bronte), who asked her to interest herself in the youngster's striking literary gifts, which, hampered by ill health, he was
