Memorial Day

Memorial Day

The troubled world can offer no award

To you who sleep beneath the chiseled stone.

You died because we handed you the sword,

And we are free because you sleep alone.

The tides of history well may change the cause,

And time may blunt the sharpness of the debt,

For sacrifice, a nation under laws

Is gathered here today, lest we forget.

                        --Robert A. Hall

I composed this poem while marching in the Fitchburg, MA Memorial Day Parade in 1975, then used it in my speech at the upper common.