Veterans of the Wars

Edwin, your father has never ceased to be
My admiration, and I can close my eyes
And see his soldier shape arise
In vivid memory.

And I recall him as he used to stride
So straight, and how he never stayed or shirked
Through the long years, and how he worked
For wages to provide

For you and for his brood; and by great care
Saved from small earnings enough to buy a house,
A garden and some apple boughs
For his Sunday and evening chair,

When with his duties ended he would read
Of Antietam, Shiloh, the Wilderness,
Of battles he had fought, of stress,
Of victory and stampede.

And when old age and agonized disease
Racked him he bore them with heroic will,
As one who knew the battle's drill,
And prized the good of peace.

What training like the soldier's life commands
For all men's days such strength and discipline,
For all the labors, trials wherein
The soul deserts or stands?

Were soldiers not of money plots the pawn;
Or did not after wars vote as they fought,
Who would not have the youthful wrought
Into such will and brawn?

Were there some way to keep the usurers chained
Against the use of souls by Mars refined
Above the mass of humankind,
Who would not have them trained?

For those who were in mind your father's peers,
But dodged the battle, were about our town
The drunkards, failures, drooped and down,
Who crawled the idiot years.
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