An Epitaph for Little Children

These, fast asleep in such a little room,

The tawdry grave-wreaths crackling over them,

Might have been men who would have moved the world,

Might have been women, mothers of a race

More great than we can know. The could not live:

We have to build great armaments to fight

Forests of things half man, half animal,

Far in the islands that our trading needs:

We have to build high palaces to keep

White childless women merry and content:

We have no money left to save for these,

These, only little children, only poor,

Life in the heats; we have no place to spare

That they could play in …. Yet we need not grieve,

Not more than they, asleep. We need not grieve

Even for those of them who have not died,

For they, made warped and blind by circumstance

Shall live their round from stupid day to day,

Too dull to know a need; and they shall bear

Dull, blinded folk to rule this world of ours

We shall have died from. Do not mourn for these:

Mourn for that sorry world that still shall be,

Made by our careless hands that make today

These little children so to live or die.