About the "manifold commands" which some have mentioned...
First of all, I already have a feeling I might be the only one to see the poem the way I do -- that the woman's men either fell in war or died of war-related injuries later. On a "personal" level. it's not impossible that Ms Thompson's male family members & lovers really did die in or from a war. But since I don't know Ms Thomson I take the poem to a general level and what I myself see is all the men being singled out as dead and the women alive. And on a general level, that can be read as the effects of war. The last lines -- the couplet -- can be seen as saying that, yes, it takes strength to go to war, it takes courage, but for the women who lose their men in war, it takes strength & courage to bury them, to live with the loss.
And back to "manifold commands", though spoken by the daughters, I think the phrase also conjures up military commands that the men would have heard in war.
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