Classic Poem

The holy day of heroes — let us greet it
With rain of blooms on every soldier's grave,
With hearts that utter, ere our lips repeat it,
The sacred cry of Glory to the Brave!
Our spirits yearn with pride and pain
Toward the unforgotten slain
Of Gettysburg, Chancellorsville,
Chattanooga, Malvern Hill,
Dallas, Shiloh — what you will,
For names spring fast
From the burning Past,
Almost the Present still.
Tears still are salt for those who fell,
Precious wreckage of shot and shell,
Bruised and shattered and overthrown,
Riders cleft by the saber-stroke,
Stormers torn in the cannon-smoke,
The dying whose gaze could scarce descry
Floating flag from drifting sky, —
Trampled and rent and riven,
Their orison a groan,
Giving their life as the Christ's was given,
For a mercy not their own.
O shining spirits who thronging went
Up from that awful sacrament,
By one keen agony shriven,
Up from the South where the slave had wept,
Up from the land where the truth had slept, —
O shining spirits, be well content!
Did not your blood atone?

II

And ah! those specters of men
Called to endure
In sickly swamp, in prison pen,
A martyrdom obscure;
When will our pang for these be healed,
Or passionate pity cease for those
Who, stretched long hours on the encrimsoned field,
Prayed God for one more bullet from their foes?
Many ambrosial Mays
With weft of bud and tender leaf,
Impearled with gleaming rains,
Have hid those battle stains,
But have not quenched the grief,
And have not dimmed the praise.
E'en now, on these delicious days,
Comes there no sob of loss,
No bugle call across
The dulcet lilt of birds in creamy sprays?

III

The count of dead is not complete
With those whose splendid winding-sheet
Was ruddy fire and vital flow
Of patriot blood — red roses strow —
Not yet with those who bore
A lingering tragedy, for whom we heap
Poppies of balmy sleep.
The fatal list has more.
Above this flush of flowers already shed
Pallor of lilies spread,
Sad-suited mignonette,
Pitiful violet,
With honeysuckle from some cottage door,
And that remembrancer of grief and pride,
The dusky-purple pansy lit with gold;
For underneath this turfed and bannered mold,
A woman's heart lies cold,
A heart whose leaping pulse no Mays restore.
In count of battle-slain
Let not our land ignore
The wifely bliss, the bridal hope of maid,
But know these, too, were unafraid
And glory-fain.
Not to the men alone this rite belongs
Of strewments and of songs.
There is no sex in courage and in pain.

IV

The beautiful of months, the winsome May,
Our yearly miracle no atheisms wither,
Is soon away.
Her dainty wings of orient feather
Already take the air.
Ah, whither, whither?
In what star-chamber wouldst thou cloister thee,
What astral nunnery austerely white,
To awe the rapture in thy rosy blood,
To saint thy wild, capricious maidenhood?
O novice rare,
Unruly acolyte,
Startling the skies with bursts of lyric glee,
With scent and color of the vernal wood,
With such ecstatic thrill of sweet New England weather
The moonbeams dance together,
And angels on the heavenly hills
Fall harping unaware
A music like the run of rills
And bird-songs debonair!

V

Let Heaven not trust thy tales too well,
O exquisite historian!
Not always may our planet dwell
Within thy smile aurorean.
Even now the change is hinted.
This richer-voiced tune
Of birds more gayly tinted,
This turf with gold imprinted,
Are omens of the June.
And yet, as symbol true,
We break to softly strew
Above our youth who in their valor fell,
Thine orchard blooms of evanescent hue,
Of such ethereal pink
As Ariel might sink
His folded plumage in for fairy cell.
These arborous delicates
Our sorrow consecrates
To those fair manhoods broken in their spring,
Whose fruitage is a fragrance blown abroad
To seed the happy sod
With peace and freedom for an harvesting.
Their labor-tide, that looked so brief,
Bound immortality in sheaf;
The life transcends the clod;
Nor may an earthly song aspire to tell
How blithe they tread the blessed asphodel
Who garnered for the granaries of God.

VI

Such comforts soothe the grief that saddens yet
Within the paean of the Northern pine;
But where shall pity seek an anodyne
For sorrows that the South may not forget?
From shattered cup and wasted wine
A perfume fills the air,
A scent that makes defeat divine,
And victory a prayer.
There bides beyond the mist a hoar magician
Of patient eyes and art most sweet and strange.
We bring to him our folly, our contrition,
In his alembic dim to undergo their change.
The secret of his alchemy who knows,
Or whence the jewel potent to refine?
His charm works even as the lily blows,
And faith may neither further nor oppose.
O necromancer old,
Thou givest joy for sighing,
New life for noble dying.
Naught human is so vain
But holds some goodly grain
For purifying.
So take them, gentle Time, our manifold
Losses and loves and drops of bitter brine;
Transmute our dross to gold.