The Boy Who Will Never Return

There is mourning in cottage and mansion,

There is sighing and moaning and tears,

And hearts that are breaking with sorrow

That will never pass on with the years.

Yet hoping is mingled with weeping.

And the candles of faith brightly burn

In the homes where the mothers are praying

For the boy who will never return.

His chair at the table is vacant.

His room, as he left it, is still,

And the pictures and pennants seem waiting

Like his father and mother, until

Their laddie comes back up the roadway.

And, oh! how their hearts for him yearn,

But, alas! in his grave he is sleeping —

He is one who will never return.

His clothing, sent back from the army,

Is tenderly laid on his bed.

Where his mother's fond fingers caress them

As she kneels down to pray for her dead.

God be good to those mothers and fathers

At the limit of agony's bourne;

Give repose to the soul of their loved one,

The boy who will never return.

His service flag hangs in the window,

A gold star instead of the blue.

Mute sign of a soldier's devotion.

Which a fond mother's tears will bedew

As she folds it away in the Bible,

Whose promise again she will learn

That in heaven some day she will meet him —

Her boy — who will never return.

(Written and published by John F. Dalton, editor Manson, Iowa, Democrat, December, 1918.)[1]

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[1] Eilers, Tom D.  Buena Vista's Part in the World War.  Storm Lake, 1920, p. 9.