Blessed are those who died in great battles.
Stretched out on the ground in the face of God.
Blessed are those who died on a final high place,
Amid all the pomp of grandiose funerals.

Blessed are those who died for their carnal cities.
For they are the body of the City of God.
Blessed are those who died for their hearth and their fire,
And the lowly honors of their father’s house.

For such is the image and such the beginning
The body and the shadow of the house of God.
Blessed are those who died in that embrace,
In honor’s clasp and earth’s avowal.

For honor’s clasp is the beginning
And the first draught of eternal avowal.
Blessed are those who died in this crushing down,
In the accomplishment of this earthly vow.

For earth’s vow is the beginning
And the first draught of faithfulness.
Blessed are those who died in that coronation
In that obedience and that humility.

Blessed are those who died, for they have returned
Into primeval clay and primeval earth.
Blessed are those who died in a just war.
Blessed is the wheat that is ripe and the wheat that is gathered in sheaves.