CAPTAIN E WRIGHT
THE QUEEN'S ROYAL WEST SURREY REGIMENT
3RD JULY 1916 AGE 49
BURIED: AVELUY COMMUNAL CEMETERY EXTENSION, FRANCE
At first reading this inscription looks as though it's saying the same as Binyon's poem: age will not wither him because he will never grow old. However, this is not the meaning of the words in the sonnet Shakespeare wrote, Sonnet XI. Shakespeare, who is addressing this sonnet sequence to a young man, tells him that:
She [nature] carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby
Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.
If the young man doesn't have children then all that nature has endowed him with will age and decay and be lost.
Captain Wright was 49 when he was killed, beyond the age of compulsary military service. He had been born and brought up in Brazil, was a former broker and bank manager and had married a Brazilian woman. Who knows whether he had childen, who knows how his inscription was meant, although I find it interesting that the layout of the lines of the inscription, specified by the Mr CPD Wright who confirmed it, aren't the same as those of the sonnet:
Herein lies wisdom, beauty and increase;
Without this folly, age and cold decay: