| |
I
1861–1865
BUT do we truly mourn our soldier dead, | |
| Or understand at all their precious fame— | |
| We that were born too late to feel the flame | |
| That leapt from lowly hearths, and grew, dispread, | |
| And, like a pillar of fire, our armies led? | 5 |
| Or you that knew them—do the long years tame | |
| The memory-anguish? Are they more than name? | |
| Oh, let no stinted grief profane their bed! | |
| Let tears bedew each wreath that decks the lawn | |
| Of every grave! and raise a solemn prayer | 10 |
| That their battalioned souls be joined to fare | |
| Dim roads, beyond the trumpets of the dawn, | |
| Yet perfumed, somehow, by our flowers that heap | |
| The peaceful barracks where their bodies sleep. | |
| |
II
1898–1899
AND now the long, long lines of the Nation’s graves | 15 |
| Grow longer; and the venerate slopes reveal | |
| The fresh spring turf gashed thick with tombs to seal | |
| Away another army of our braves. | |
| So hang black garlands from the architraves | |
| Of all the capitols. The dying peal | 20 |
| Of bugles wails their final Taps. So kneel | |
| And give the dead the due their virtue craves. | |
| Thank God, the olden sinew still is bred; | |
| The milk of American mothers still is sweet; | |
| The sword of Seventy-six is sharp and bright; | 25 |
| The Flag still floats unblotted with defeat! | |
| But ah the blood that keeps its ripples red, | |
| The starry lives that keep its field alight; | |
| The pangs of women and the tears they’ve bled | |
| |
| The Lord enlarge our spirits till we feel | 30 |
| The greatness of these spirits upward fled. | |
| A kind of genius it has been that fed | |
| Them strength to be, above all passions, leal. | |
| They put aside the velvet for the steel, | |
| Left love, and hope, and ease at home; and sped | 35 |
| To the wilderness of war and every dread. | |
| Their blood is mortar for our commonweal; | |
| Their deeds its decoration and its boast. | |
| So mix with dirges, triumph; smiles, with tears. | |
| Make sorrow perfect with exultant pride— | 40 |
| Our vanished armies have not truly died; | |
| They march to-day before the heavenly host; | |
| And history’s veterans raise a storm of cheers, | |
| As the Yankee troops—with glory armed and shod— | |
| In Grand Review swing past the throne of God. | 45 |
| |
