| |
| BUGLES! | |
| And the Great Nation thrills and leaps to arms! | |
| Prompt, unconstrained, immediate, | |
| Without misgiving and without debate, | |
| Too calm, too strong for fury or alarms, | 5 |
| The people blossoms armies and puts forth | |
| The splendid summer of its noiseless might; | |
| For the old sap of fight | |
| Mounts up in South and North, | |
| The thrill | 10 |
| That tingled in our veins at Bunker Hill | |
| And brought to bloom July of ’Seventy-Six! | |
| Pine and palmetto mix | |
| With the sequoia of the giant West | |
| Their ready banners, and the hosts of war | 15 |
| Near and far, | |
| Sudden as dawn, | |
| Innumerable as forests, hear the call | |
| Of the bugles, | |
| The battle-birds! | 20 |
| For not alone the brave, the fortunate, | |
| Who first of all | |
| Have put their knapsacks on— | |
| They are the valiant vanguard of the rest!— | |
| Not they alone, but all our millions wait, | 25 |
| Hand on sword, | |
| For the word | |
| That bids them bid the nations know us sons of Fate. | |
| |
| Bugles! | |
| And in my heart a cry, | 30 |
| —Like a dim echo far and mournfully | |
| Blown back to answer them from yesterday! | |
| A soldier’s burial! | |
| November hillsides and the falling leaves | |
| Where the Potomac broadens to the tide— | 35 |
| The crisp autumnal silence and the gray | |
| (As of a solemn ritual | |
| Whose congregation glories as it grieves, | |
| Widowed but still a bride)— | |
| The long hills sloping to the wave, | 40 |
| And the lone bugler standing by the grave! | |
| |
| Taps! | |
| The lonely call over the lonely woodlands— | |
| Rising like the soaring of wings, | |
| Like the flight of an eagle— | 45 |
| Taps! | |
| They sound forever in my heart. | |
| From farther still, | |
| The echoes—still the echoes! | |
| The bugles of the dead | 50 |
| Blowing from spectral ranks an answering cry! | |
| The ghostly roll of immaterial drums, | |
| Beating reveille in the camps of dream, | |
| As from far meadows comes, | |
| Over the pathless hill, | 55 |
| The irremeable stream. | |
| I hear the tread | |
| Of the great armies of the Past go by; | |
| I hear, | |
| Across the wide sea wash of years between, | 60 |
| Concord and Valley Forge shout back from the unseen, | |
| And Vicksburg give a cheer. | |
| |
| Our cheer goes back to them, the valiant dead! | |
| Laurels and roses on their graves to-day, | |
| Lilies and laurels over them we lay, | 65 |
| And violets o’er each unforgotten head. | |
| Their honor still with the returning May | |
| Puts on its springtime in our memories, | |
| Nor till the last American with them lies | |
| Shall the young year forget to strew their bed. | 70 |
| Peace to their ashes, sleep and honored rest! | |
| But we—awake! | |
| Ours to remember them with deeds like theirs! | |
| From sea to sea the insistent bugle blares, | |
| The drums will not be still for any sake; | 75 |
| And as an eagle rears his crest, | |
| Defiant, from some tall pine of the North, | |
| And spreads his wings to fly, | |
| The banners of America go forth | |
| Against the clarion sky. | 80 |
| Veteran and volunteer, | |
| They who were comrades of that shadow host, | |
| And the young brood whose veins renew the fires | |
| That burned in their great sires, | |
| Alike we hear | 85 |
| The summons sounding clear | |
| From coast to coast,— | |
| The cry of the bugles, | |
| The battle-birds! | |
| |
| Bugles! | 90 |
| The imperious bugles! | |
| Still their call | |
| Soars like an exaltation to the sky. | |
| They call on men to fall, | |
| To die,— | 95 |
| Remembered or forgotten, but a part | |
| Of the great beating of the Nation’s heart! | |
| A call to sacrifice! | |
| A call to victory! | |
| Hark, in the Empyrean | 100 |
| The battle-birds! | |
| The bugles! | |
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