A Poem for Decoration Day

Here Dead Lie We 

Here dead lie we because we did not choose 

To live and shame the land from which we sprung. 

Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose      

But young men think it is, and we were young.

A.E. Houseman  

Found in Other Men's Flowers: An Anthology of Poetry, A.P. Wavell, ed. G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1945.