Sgt. Robert Bayless IV: Then and Now

I do not know whether this is the end of the story-it may be, but I'm not sure. It was raining and bitter cold yesterday, but I had decided to go to Perry. The pictures are of Robert and Maxine in Clarinda-it would have been in the middle 1920s, the business that Robert started on Rawson street then and now, and Robert's simple pink granite headstone where he sleeps.

A.E. Housman's as good for Robert as it was for my father.

AN EPITAPH

Stay, if you list, O passer by the way;
Yet night approaches; better not to stay.
I never sigh, nor flush, nor knit the brow,
Nor grieve to think how ill God made me, now.
Here, with one balm for many fevers found,
Whole of an ancient evil, I sleep sound.


A.E. Housman