When marble wears away,
And monuments are dust,
The songs that guard our soldiers' clay
Will still fulfil their trust.
With lifted head, and steady tread,
Like stars that guard the skies,
Go watch each bed, where rest the dead,
Brave Songs, with sleepless eyes.
Abram J. Ryan [1839-1888]
THE winds that once the Argo bore
Have died by Neptune's ruined shrines,
And her hull is the drift of the deep-sea floor,
Though shaped of Pelion's tallest pines.
You may seek her crew on every isle
Fair in the foam of Ægean seas,
But, out of their rest, no charm can wile
Jason and Orpheus and Hercules.
And Priam's wail is heard no more
By windy Ilion's sea-built walls;
Nor great Achilles, stained with gore,
Shouts, "O ye gods, 'tis Hector falls!"
On Ida's mount is the shining snow,
But Jove has gone from its brow away;
And red on the plain the poppies grow
Where Greek and Trojan fought that day.
Mother Earth, are the heroes dead?
Do they thrill the soul of the years no more?
Are the gleaming snows and the poppies red
All that is left of the brave of yore?
Are there none to fight as Theseus fought,
Far in the young world's misty dawn?
Or to teach as gray-haired Nestor taught?
Mother Earth; are the heroes gone?
Gone? In a grander form they rise.
Dead? We may clasp their hands in ours, And catch the light of their clearer eyes,
And wreathe their brows with immortal flowers. Wherever a noble deed is done,
'Tis the pulse of a hero's heart is stirred;
Wherever Right has a triumph won,
There are the heroes' voices heard.
Their armor rings on a fairer field
Than Greek and Trojan fiercely trod;
For Freedom's sword is the blade they wield,
And the gleam above is the smile of God.
So, in his isle of calm delight,
Jason may sleep the years away;
For the heroes live, and the sky is bright,
And the world is a braver world to-day.
Edna Dean Proctor [1838-
O BITTER wind toward the sunset blowing,
What of the dales to-night?
In yonder gray old hall what fires are glowing,
What ring of festal light?
"In the great window as the day was dwindling
I saw an old man stand;
His head was proudly held and his eyes kindling,
But the list shook in his hand."
O wind of twilight, was there no word uttered,
No sound of joy or wail?
"A great fight and a good death,' he muttered;
'Trust him, he would not fail.""
What of the chamber dark where she was lying For whom all life is done?
"Within her heart she rocks a dead child, crying
'My son, my little son.'"
THEY shot young Windebank just here,
By Merton, where the sun
Strikes on the wall. 'Twas in a year
Of blood the deed was done.
At morning from the meadows dim
He watched them dig his grave.
Was this in truth the end for him,
The well beloved and brave?
He marched with soldier scarf and sword,
Set free to die that day,
And free to speak once more the word
That marshalled men obey.
But silent on the silent band
That faced him stern as death,
He looked and on the summer land,
And on the grave beneath.
Then with a sudden smile and proud
He waved his plume and cried,
"The king! the king!" and laughed aloud,
'The king! the king!" and died.
Let none affirm he vainly fell,
And paid the barren cost
Of having loved and served too well
A poor cause and a lost.
He in the soul's eternal cause
Went forth as martyrs must
The kings who make the spirit laws
And rule us from the dust,
Whose wi'ls unshaken by the breath
Of adverse Fate endure,
To give us honor strong as death
And loyal love as sure.
A HARROW GRAVE IN FLANDERS
HERE in the marshland, past the battered bridge,
One of a hundred grains untimely sown,
Here, with his comrades of the hard-won ridge,
He rests, unknown.
His horoscope had seemed so plainly drawn:
School triumphs earned apace in work and play; Friendships at will; then love's delightful dawn And mellowing day.
Home fostering hope; some service to the State;
Benignant age; then the long tryst to keep
Where in the yew-tree shadow congregate
His fathers sleep.
Was here the one thing needful to distil
From life's alembic, through this holier fate,
The man's essential soul, the hero-will?
Robert Offley Ashburton [1858
You from Givenchy, since no years can harden
The beautiful dead, when holy twilight reaches
The sleeping cedar and the copper beeches,
Return to walk again in Wadham Garden.
We, growing old, grow stranger to the College,
Symbol of youth, where we were young together,
But you, beyond the reach of time and weather,
Of youth in death forever keep the knowledge.
We hoard our youth, we hoard our youth, and fear it,
But you, who freely gave what we have hoarded,
Are with the final goal of youth rewarded-
The road to travel and the traveler's spirit.
And therefore, when for us the stars go down,
Your star is steady over Oxford Town.
THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB
THE Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride:
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
George Gordon Byron [1788-1824]
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