Classic Poem

Amid the hush of the distant hills which house
The sleeping meadows, oak leaves loose and fall
Across the sunlight, and along the rhythmical
Wash of the air upon this shore of boughs.

Leaves drift around the bronzes. But over the grass
Of the field where Pickett's men defied
The grape shot and the cannon, and who died,
The shadows of October's clouds repass.

No shouts arise from the vanished garrisons;
No sound is here of wounded man or steed;
Meade stares at Lee, and Lee at Meade
Across a mile of pasture, eyed in bronze,

Where flies the solitary crow. Beyond
The spires of Gettysburg the skies implore;
And near the cattle graze, and grackles soar
Where the air is tranced as by a wizard's wand.

Till now it is a suspended mood whose gleam
Is like an invisible crystal which enspheres
The souls it veils, who with Elysian ears
List the far voice of undiscovered dream.

This stillness is the indifference of the sky,
The tranquil Muses behind the mountains hid,
Who suffer the Fate's beginning, nor forbid,
Nor ask the battle, nor mourn the tragedy.

Still they are brooding in their fanes afar;
And now they stir the oak leaves with their breath,
Saying there is no life, neither is death,
Nor victors, nor defeated, nor fame, nor war;

But only music at last out of the dreams of these,
As the one reality which overtones the mime,
The landscape, nations, races, even Time,
Quiring eternal Nature whose heart is peace.