TO THE MEMORY OF ALLEN F. BAKER

Col. Frank C. Love

c. February 1952

How can you fashion, mould or plan

An altar worthy of the man

Who gives himself, his life, his all

While answering his country’s urgent call?

Finest silver or richest gold

Cannot the needed values hold.

Build it of wood or hew it from stone

Still they do not our needs atone.

How shall we then its substance frame

To justly reverence and lift his name?

Take if you will from a woman’s heart

The love and the faith it had set apart.

Tinge it with blood from his bleeding soul.

Wrap it about with her grief as a scroll

Ring it with loss his children must bear

Braced with the pride that will always be there

Shadow its face with the lonely years

Mingled with drops of his widow’s tears

Deck it with memories precious and true

Bathe it with light of eternity’s hue

Epitaph? Yes, but what more could it be

Save “Freely he died to keep men free”

Come then his nation, take up his task,

Here died a man, what more can you ask?