32 years ago to-day, on just such a sunny April Day. To-day I write these beautiful words that so well sum up his life to March 29, 1944.
(An envoy from the French word envoi, means the verses at the end of a poem in which some general idea of the poem is summed up and emphasised. The envoy is thus the message which the poem has carried to the reader. Here it is a way of saying that the life to which this is the envoy had been of itself a poem.) by Charlotte Becker.
Say not, because he did no wondrous deed
Amassed no worldly gain,
Wrote no great book, revealed no hidden truth,
Perchance he lived in vain.
For there was grief within a thousand hearts
The hour he ceased to live;
He held the love of women and of men:
Life has no more to give!
May Hill’s husband Will died on 29th March 1944 following the brief illness which was first mentioned in the Diary entry of 24th March 1944.
15th April 1912 was Will and May’s Wedding Day.
Charlotte Becker’s ‘Envoy’ was published in‘The Poets and Poetry of Buffalo’, ed. James N Johnston, p426, Buffalo, New York, 1904 (currently in the public domain) having earlier been published in Munsey’s Magazine, New York, 1903 and the Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia, 1904). The full book text has been contributed by University of California Libraries to an ‘Internet Archive’: It can be downloaded in various modern formats including the most popular e-book formats.
Have you read an introduction to May Hill & family (includes photographs) and explored ‘The Casualties Were Small’?