For Your Boy - and Mine

Poem for the Day

For Your Boy - and Mine
by Edgar Albert Guest

Your dream and my dream is not that we shall rest,
But that our children after us shall know life at its best;
For all we care about ourselves—a crust of bread or two,
A place to sleep and clothes to wear is all that we'd pursue.
We'd tramp the world on sunny days, both light of heart and mind,
And give no thought to days to come or days we leave behind.

Your dream and my dream is not that we shall play,
But that our children after us shall tread a merry way.
We brave the toil of life for them, for them we clamber high,
And if 'twould spare them hurt and pain, for them we'd gladly die.
If we had but ourselves to serve, we'd quit the ways of pride
And with the simplest joys of earth we'd all be satisfied.

The best for them is what we dream. Our little girls and boys
Must know the finest life can give of comforts and of joys.
They must be shielded well from woe and kept secure from care,
And if we could, upon our backs, their burdens we would bear.
And so once more we rise to-day to face the battle zone
That those who follow us may know the Flag that we have known.

Your dream and my dream is not that we shall live;
The greatest joys we hope to claim are those that we shall give.
We face the heat and strife of life, its battle and its toil
That those who follow us may know the best of freedom's soil.
And if we knew that by our death we'd keep that flag on high,
For your boy and my boy, how gladly we would die.