Classic Poem

On a strange and distant meadow,
A soldier is lying dead;
Unknown, unmourned, and forgotten,
Though bravely he fought and bled.

Though many a cross-decked general
Rides past him with martial air;
Who thinks of a decoration
For the dead man lying there?

Ah! sad are the tears and searchings
For many a lost one dear;
Alas! for that poor dead soldier
Is neither question nor tear.

And yet, far off in the homestead,
There sits in the evening-red
A father filled with forebodings,
Who sighs, " He surely is dead. "

There sits a sorrowing mother,
God help her, the sad eyes fill;
" He comes, but only in spirit,
The clock at eleven stands still. "

And a maiden pale is gazing
Into the gloaming apart;
" Though dead and gone from among us,
He is not dead to my heart. "

And thus there were three there shedding —
As only such bruised hearts may —
Their tears in the eyes of heaven
For the dead man far away.

But heaven changed to a cloudlet
Those tears with its loving hand,
And carried it quickly over
To that far-off foreign land,

And poured from the cloud the tear-drops
In dew on that soldier's head;
And he lay unwept no longer
On that distant meadow, dead!