Comrade of knapsack or bandolier!
Tread light, we pray, when you pass this way,
For sake of the brave ones slumbering here,
Nameless in death to the Judgement Day.
Tread light lest the tramp of your martial host
Or the rattle of rifle or bayonet-blade,
Should ring down the night to their silent post,
And rouse them too soon for the Grand Parade.
Close-buried they lie, yet they perished lone,
And Death scattered them wide on the warworn track
And we found them far out, in their Fate, unknown,
And rev’rent and sadly we brought them back,
And we laid them to rest on this lonely slope,
With the sward they had won for their funereal-pall,
‘Neath the star-hung beacons of Faith and Hope,
While the night-wind whispered its sentry-call.
And we fashioned a slab for each sacred tomb,
And in rough-hewn letters their Tale engraved,
While in grim salute came the far-in boom
Of the guns whose pathway their lives had paved,
And we hollowed a space in the solemn stone
For the names they’d gloried, which none could tell,
Save God, to whose Silence their souls had flown,
And the cold earth which guarded His secret well.
And we banished a tear as the final end
Of the last sad sepulchre sank home,
For the anguished cries to a silent God
Of the dear ones left in the years to come—
Of the Mothers waiting in hopes so vain
In the homes made lonely far o’er the sea,
Where they’d list for the “step at the door again,”
And the fond embrace that could never be.
And we wondered the while—when on History’s page,
With Heroes’ life-blood, their country’s fame,
Was lettered in fire, for each future age
To kindle ever in quenchless flame
What honoured place in that glorious tale
With their Nation’s patriot Dead would share
The comrades brave which Death’s solemn veil
Left nameless asleep in the silence there.
From: “Letters from the Front” in The Advertiser, Saturday 4 December 1915, p. 17.
(https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/8665110)
Date: 1915
By: Thomas Vincent Brennan (1889-1920)
From Troubles of The World 
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