Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
by A.E. Housman

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
     The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
     And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;      
     They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,         
     And saved the sum of things for pay.

(1922)

This poem was a tribute to the British Regular Army in the First Battle of Ypres (1914) by A.E. Housman