To the Unknown Warrior
You whom the kings saluted; who refused
The one great pleasure of ignoble days,
Fame without name and glory without gossip,
Whom no biographer befouls with praise.
Who said of you "Defeated"?
In the
The dug-out where the limelight never comes,
Nor the big drum of Barnum's show can
That vibrant stillness after all the drums.
Though the time comes when every Yankee
Can use our soldiers for its sandwich-men,
When those that pay the piper call the tune,
You will not dance.
You will not move again.
You will not march for Fatty Arbuckle,
Though he have yet a favourable press,
Tender as San Francisco to St.
Or all the angels of Los Angeles.
They shall not storm the last unfallen fortress,
The lonely castle where uncowed and free,
Dwells the unknown and undefeated
That did alone defeat Publicity.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
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