THE COMMON TASK
The land we from our fathers had in trust,
And to our children will transmit or die:
This is our maxim, this is our piety;
And God and nature say that it is just.
That which we would perform in arms-we must!
Wordsworth’s “Motherland”
Glory we count of lesser worth
Than wife and babe and hearth and home;
Theirs is the mandate speeding forth
Our steps of thunder on the foam;
For them we fight, for them we stand,
Yea, and for faith ‘twixt land and land.
William Watson’s “Ten Men Forsworn”
Give my love to Patrick-street, Waterford, for that is where the best girl on earth lives, and tell Ireland that we’re doing our duty and that Thomas Moran will have another go at the Germans directly the doctor permits: Pte. T. Moran, East Lancashire Regiment
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