Letters to the editor for Wednesday, June 4, 2014

The Immortal Treasure Chest

Being an ex U.S. Navy man and having spent four of my best years in the Navy, I often think of the haunting idea of ....

The Immortal Treasure Chest

There is a treasure beneath the sea

Which is truly a part of you and me —

It rests unclaimed by those who’d presume

To plumb the depths of its watery tomb,

And its priceless worth could never be weighed —

For our lives today with its “own” made a trade.

It’s not the cargo of silver and gold

Once lost by ships in warfares of old —

Nor is it the pearl with a value so high

That “brutes” have battled for — live or die!

No, it’s something by far much greater than all

Which most have forgotten, but some will recall:

It’s the Spirit of those who had blazed the way —

The heroic “makers of today” —

Our ancestral forbears in terminal strife

Who sank in triumph to raise us to life;

And few really know of, or give little thought

To the birth of our freedom for which they fought —

While so beneath the seas still rest,

The immortal “human” treasure chest!

Thane Cornell

Carson City