Farewell to Gallipoli
By Alfred Leslie Guppy
“I hope that those fellows
who lie buried along the ‘dere’ will be soundly sleeping and not here us as we
march away.”
Not only muffled is our
tread,
To cheat the foe,
We fear to rouse our
honoured dead
To hear us go.
Sleep sound, old friends
– the keenest smart,
Which, more than failure,
wounds the heart,
Is thus to leave you –
thus to part,
Comrades, Farewell.
Together throbbed our
hearts that night
When, through the foam,
Shone – flickered – faded
from our sight,
The lights of home.
From east, from west, we
gathered here.
New friends we made, old
grown more dear.
We leave you with the
dying year.
Comrades, Farewell.
To those of us not doomed
to lie,
On some new field,
Country and home will by
and by
Their welcome yield.
In that glad hour our
hearts will stray
Back to Anzac and Suvla
Bay,
To you whose absence
clouds the day,
Comrades, Farewell.
For you “a praise which
grows not old”,
Is more meet tomb,
Than sepulchre, engraved
with gold,
In stately gloom.
On hearts of men, O’
lonely dead,
For all time graven, may
we read,
How for man’s sake, you
died, you bled,
Comrades, farewell.
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