Epitaph On An Army Of Mercenaries By A E Housman

I like the unsentimental nature of this poem which never fails to bring a smile to my lips:

 

 

“These, in the day when heaven was falling,

 

The hour when earth’s foundations fled,

 

Followed their mercenary calling,

 

And took their wages, and are dead.

 

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;

 

They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;

 

What God abandoned, these defended,

 

And saved the sum of things for pay.”