The New School

by Joyce Kilmer

HE halls that were loud with the merry tread of young and careless feet
⁠Are still with a stillness that is too drear to seem like holiday,
And never a gust of laughter breaks the calm of the dreaming street
⁠Or rises to shake the ivied walls and frighten the doves away.


The dust is on book and on empty desk, and the tennis-racquet and balls
⁠Lie still in their lonely locker and wait for a game that is never played,
And over the study and lecture-room and the river and meadow falls
⁠A stern peace, a strange peace, a peace that War has made.


For many a youthful shoulder now is gay with an epaulet,
⁠And the hand that was deft with a cricket-bat is defter with a sword,
And some of the lads will laugh to-day where the trench is red and wet,
⁠And some will win on the bloody field the accolade of the Lord.


They have taken their youth and mirth away from the study and playing-ground
⁠To a new school in an alien land beneath an alien sky;
Out in the smoke and roar of the fight their lessons and games are found,
⁠And they who were learning how to live are learning how to die.


And after the golden day has come and the war is at an end,
⁠A slab of bronze on the chapel wall will tell of the noble dead.
And every name on that radiant list will be the name of a friend,
⁠A name that shall through the centuries in grateful prayers be said.


And there will be ghosts in the old school, brave ghosts with laughing eyes,
⁠On the field with a ghostly cricket-bat, by the stream with a ghostly rod;
They will touch the hearts of the living with a flame that sanctifies,
⁠A flame that they took with strong young hands from the altar-fires of God.