Poems / Alan Seeger [electronic text]

LAST POEMS

1916

THE AISNE (1914-15)

WE first saw fire on the tragic slopes Where the flood-tide of France's early gain, Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes, Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne.

The charge her heroes left us, we assumed, What, dying, they reconquered, we preserved, In the chill trenches, harried, shelled, entombed, Winter came down on us, but no man swerved.

Winter came down on us. The low clouds, torn In the stark branches of the riven pines, Blurred the white rockets that from dusk till morn Traced the wide curve of the close-grappling lines.

In rain, and fog that on the withered hill Froze before dawn, the lurking foe drew down; Or light snows fell that made forlorner still The ravaged country and the ruined town;

Or the long clouds would end. Intensely fair, The winter constellations blazing forth— Perseus, the Twins, Orion, the Great Bear— Gleamed on our bayonets pointing to the north.

And the lone sentinel would start and soar On wings of strong emotion as he knew That kinship with the stars that only War Is great enough to lift man's spirit to.

And ever down the curving front, aglow With the pale rockets' intermittent light, He heard, like distant thunder, growl and grow The rumble of far battles in the night,—

Rumors, reverberant, indistinct, remote, Borne from red fields whose martial names have won The power to thrill like a far trumpet-note,— Vic, Vailly, Soupir, Hurtelise, Craonne...

Craonne, before thy cannon-swept plateau, Where like sere leaves lay strewn September's dead, I found for all dear things I forfeited A recompense I would not now forego.

For that high fellowship was ours then With those who, championing another's good, More than dull Peace or its poor votaries could, Taught us the dignity of being men.

There we drained deeper the deep cup of life, And on sublimer summits came to learn, After soft things, the terrible and stern, After sweet Love, the majesty of Strife;

There where we faced under those frowning heights The blast that maims, the hurricane that kills; There where the watchlights on the winter hills Flickered like balefire through inclement nights;

There where, firm links in the unyielding chain, Where fell the long-planned blow and fell in vain— Hearts worthy of the honor and the trial, We helped to hold the lines along the Aisne.

CHAMPAGNE (1914-15)

IN the glad revels, in the happy fêtes, When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearled With the sweet wine of France that concentrates The sunshine and the beauty of the world,

Drink sometimes, you whose footsteps yet may tread The undisturbed, delightful paths of Earth, To those whose blood, in pious duty shed, Hallows the soil where that same wine had birth.

Here, by devoted comrades laid away, Along our lines they slumber where they fell, Beside the crater at the Ferme d'Alger And up the bloody slopes of La Pompelle,

And round the city whose cathedral towers The enemies of Beauty dared profane, And in the mat of multicolored flowers That clothe the sunny chalk-fields of Champagne.

Under the little crosses where they rise The soldier rests. Now round him undismayed The cannon thunders, and at night he lies At peace beneath the eternal fusillade...

That other generations might possess— From shame and menace free in years to come— A richer heritage of happiness, He marched to that heroic martyrdom.

Esteeming less the forfeit that he paid Than undishonored that his flag might float Over the towers of liberty, he made His breast the bulwark and his blood the moat.

Obscurely sacrificed, his nameless tomb, Bare of the sculptor's art, the poet's lines, Summer shall flush with poppy-fields in bloom, And Autumn yellow with maturing vines.

There the grape-pickers at their harvesting Shall lightly tread and load their wicker trays, Blessing his memory as they toil and sing In the slant sunshine of October days....

I love to think that if my blood should be So privileged to sink where his has sunk, I shall not pass from Earth entirely, But when the banquet rings, when healths are drunk,

And faces that the joys of living fill Glow radiant with laughter and good cheer, In beaming cups some spark of me shall still Brim toward the lips that once I held so dear.

So shall one coveting no higher plane Than nature clothes in color and flesh and tone, Even from the grave put upward to attain The dreams youth cherished and missed and might have known;

And that strong need that strove unsatisfied Toward earthly beauty in all forms it wore, Not death itself shall utterly divide From the belovèd shapes it thirsted for.

Alas, how many an adept for whose arms Life held delicious offerings perished here, How many in the prime of all that charms, Crowned with all gifts that conquer and endear!

Honor them not so much with tears and flowers, But you with whom the sweet fulfilment lies, Where in the anguish of atrocious hours Turned their last thoughts and closed their dying eyes,

Rather when music on bright gatherings lays Its tender spell, and joy is uppermost, Be mindful of the men they were, and raise Your glasses to them in one silent toast.

Drink to them—amorous of dear Earth as well, They asked no tribute lovelier than this— And in the wine that ripened where they fell, Oh, frame your lips as though it were a kiss.

CHAMPAGNE, FRANCE, July, 1915.

THE HOSTS

PURGED, with the life they left, of all That makes life paltry and mean and small, In their new dedication charged With something heightened, enriched, enlarged, That lends a light to their lusty brows And a song to the rhythm of their tramping feet, These are the men that have taken vows, These are the hardy, the flower, the élite,— These are the men that are moved no more By the will to traffic and grasp and store And ring with pleasure and wealth and love The circles that self is the center of; But they are moved by the powers that force The sea forever to ebb and rise, That hold Arcturus in his course, And marshal at noon in tropic skies The clouds that tower on some snow-capped chain And drift out over the peopled plain. They are big with the beauty of cosmic things. Mark how their columns surge! They seem To follow the goddess with outspread wings That points toward Glory, the soldier's dream. With bayonets bare and flags unfurled, They scale the summits of the world And fade on the farthest golden height In fair horizons full of light.

Comrades in arms there—friend or foe— That trod the perilous, toilsome trail Through a world of ruin and blood and woe In the years of the great decision—hail! Friend or foe, it shall matter nought; This only matters, in fine: we fought. For we were young and in love or strife Sought exultation and craved excess: To sound the wildest debauch in life We staked our youth and its loveliness. Let idlers argue the right and wrong And weigh what merit our causes had. Putting our faith in being strong— Above the level of good and bad— For us, we battled and burned and killed Because evolving Nature willed, And it was our pride and boast to be The instruments of Destiny. There was a stately drama writ By the hand that peopled the earth and air And set the stars in the infinite And made night gorgeous and morning fair, And all that had sense to reason knew That bloody drama must be gone through.

Some sat and watched how the action veered— Waited, profited, trembled, cheered— We saw not clearly nor understood, But yielding ourselves to the masterhand, Each in his part as best he could, We played it through as the author planned.

MAKTOOB

A SHELL surprised our post one day And killed a comrade at my side. My heart was sick to see the way He suffered as he died.

I dug about the place he fell, And found, no bigger than my thumb, A fragment of the splintered shell In warm aluminum.

I melted it, and made a mould, And poured it in the opening, And worked it, when the cast was cold, Into a shapely ring.

And when my ring was smooth and bright, Holding it on a rounded stick, For seal, I bade a Turco write Maktoob in Arabic.

Maktoob! "'Tis written!"... So they think, These children of the desert, who From its immense expanses drink Some of its grandeur too.

Within the book of Destiny, Whose leaves are time, whose cover, space, The day when you shall cease to be, The hour, the mode, the place,

Are marked, they say; and you shall not By taking thought or using wit Alter that certain fate one jot, Postpone or conjure it.

Learn to drive fear, then, from your heart. If you must perish, know, O man, 'Tis an inevitable part Of the predestined plan.

And, seeing that through the ebon door Once only you may pass, and meet Of those that have gone through before The mighty, the élite—

Guard that not bowed nor blanched with fear You enter, but serene, erect, As you would wish most to appear To those you most respect.

So die as though your funeral Ushered you through the doors that led Into a stately banquet hall Where heroes banqueted;

And it shall all depend therein Whether you come as slave or lord, If they acclaim you as their kin Or spurn you from their board.

So, when the order comes: "Attack!" And the assaulting wave deploys, And the heart trembles to look back On life and all its joys;

Or in a ditch that they seem near To find, and round your shallow trough Drop the big shells that you can hear Coming a half mile off;

When, not to hear, some try to talk, And some to clean their guns, or sing, And some dig deeper in the chalk— I look upon my ring:

And nerves relax that were most tense, And Death comes whistling down unheard, As I consider all the sense Held in that mystic word.

And it brings, quieting like balm My heart whose flutterings have ceased, The resignation and the calm And wisdom of the East.

I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH...

I HAVE a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple-blossoms fill the air— I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath— It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with Death On some scarred slope of battered hill, When Spring comes round again this year And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear... But I've a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town, When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous.

[SONNETS]

SONNET I

SIDNEY, in whom the heyday of romance Came to its precious and most perfect flower, Whether you tourneyed with victorious lance Or brought sweet roundelays to Stella's bower, I give myself some credit for the way I have kept clean of what enslaves and lowers, Shunned the ideals of our present day And studied those that were esteemed in yours; For, turning from the mob that buys Success By sacrificing all Life's better part, Down the free roads of human happiness I frolicked, poor of purse but light of heart, And lived in strict devotion all along To my three idols—Love and Arms and Song.

SONNET II

NOT that I always struck the proper mean Of what mankind must give for what they gain, But, when I think of those whom dull routine And the pursuit of cheerless toil enchain, Who from their desk-chairs seeing a summer cloud Race through blue heaven on its joyful course Sigh sometimes for a life less cramped and bowed, I think I might have done a great deal worse; For I have ever gone untied and free, The stars and my high thoughts for company; Wet with the salt-spray and the mountain showers, I have had the sense of space and amplitude, And love in many places, silver-shoed, Has come and scattered all my path with flowers.

SONNET III

WHY should you be astonished that my heart, Plunged for so long in darkness and in dearth, Should be revived by you, and stir and start As by warm April now, reviving Earth? I am the field of undulating grass And you the gentle perfumed breath of Spring, And all my lyric being, when you pass, Is bowed and filled with sudden murmuring. I asked you nothing and expected less, But, with that deep, impassioned tenderness Of one approaching what he most adores, I only wished to lose a little space All thought of my own life, and in its place To live and dream and have my joy in yours.

SONNET IV

TO... IN CHURCH

IF I was drawn here from a distant place, 'Twas not to pray nor hear our friend's address, But, gazing once more on your winsome face, To worship there Ideal Loveliness. On that pure shrine that has too long ignored The gifts that once I brought so frequently I lay this votive offering, to record How sweet your quiet beauty seemed to me. Enchanting girl, my faith is not a thing By futile prayers and vapid psalm-singing To vent in crowded nave and public pew. My creed is simple: that the world is fair, And beauty the best thing to worship there, And I confess it by adoring you.

BIARRITZ, Sunday, March 26, 1916.

SONNET V

SEEING you have not come with me, nor spent This day's suggestive beauty as we ought, I have gone forth alone and been content To make you mistress only of my thought. And I have blessed the fate that was so kind In my life's agitations to include This moment's refuge where my sense can find Refreshment, and my soul beatitude. Oh, be my gentle love a little while! Walk with me sometimes. Let me see you smile. Watching some night under a wintry sky, Before the charge, or on the bed of pain, These blessed memories shall revive again And be a power to cheer and fortify.

SONNET VI

OH, you are more desirable to me Than all I staked in an impulsive hour, Making my youth the sport of chance, to be Blighted or torn in its most perfect flower; For I think less of what that chance may bring Than how, before returning into fire, To make my dearest memory of the thing That is but now my ultimate desire. And in old times I should have prayed to her Whose haunt the groves of windy Cyprus were, To prosper me and crown with good success My will to make of you the rose-twined bowl From whose inebriating brim my soul Shall drink its last of earthly happiness.

SONNET VII

THERE have been times when I could storm and plead, But you shall never hear me supplicate. These long months that have magnified my need Have made my asking less importunate, For now small favors seem to me so great That not the courteous lovers of old time Were more content to rule themselves and wait, Easing desire with discourse and sweet rhyme. Nay, be capricious, willful; have no fear To wound me with unkindness done or said, Lest mutual devotion make too dear My life that hangs by a so slender thread, And happy love unnerve me before May For that stern part that I have yet to play.

SONNET VIII

OH, love of woman, you are known to be A passion sent to plague the hearts of men; For every one you bring felicity Bringing rebuffs and wretchedness to ten. I have been oft where human life sold cheap And seen men's brains spilled out about their ears And yet that never cost me any sleep; I lived untroubled and I shed no tears. Fools prate how war is an atrocious thing; I always knew that nothing it implied Equalled the agony of suffering Of him who loves and loves unsatisfied. War is a refuge to a heart like this; Love only tells it what true torture is.

SONNET IX

WELL, seeing I have no hope, then let us part; Having long taught my flesh to master fear, I should have learned by now to rule my heart, Although, Heaven knows, 'tis not so easy near. Oh, you were made to make men miserable And torture those who would have joy in you, But I, who could have loved you, dear, so well, Take pride in being a good loser too; And it has not been wholly unsuccess, For I have rescued from forgetfulness Some moments of this precious time that flies, Adding to my past wealth of memory The pretty way you once looked up at me, Your low, sweet voice, your smile, and your dear eyes.

SONNET X

I HAVE sought Happiness, but it has been A lovely rainbow, baffling all pursuit, And tasted Pleasure, but it was a fruit More fair of outward hue than sweet within. Renouncing both, a flake in the ferment Of battling hosts that conquer or recoil, There only, chastened by fatigue and toil, I knew what came the nearest to content. For there at least my troubled flesh was free From the gadfly Desire that plagued it so; Discord and Strife were what I used to know, Heartaches, deception, murderous jealousy; By War transported far from all of these, Amid the clash of arms I was at peace.

SONNET XI

ON RETURNING TO THE FRONT AFTER LEAVE

APART sweet women (for whom Heaven be blessed), Comrades, you cannot think how thin and blue Look the leftovers of mankind that rest, Now that the cream has been skimmed off in you. War has its horrors, but has this of good— That its sure processes sort out and bind Brave hearts in one intrepid brotherhood And leave the shams and imbeciles behind. Now turn we joyful to the great attacks, Not only that we face in a fair field Our valiant foe and all his deadly tools, But also that we turn disdainful backs On that poor world we scorn yet die to shield— That world of cowards, hypocrites, and fools.

SONNET XII

CLOUDS rosy-tinted in the setting sun, Depths of the azure eastern sky between, Plains where the poplar-bordered highways run, Patched with a hundred tints of brown and green,— Beauty of Earth, when in thy harmonies The cannon's note has ceased to be a part, I shall return once more and bring to these The worship of an undivided heart. Of those sweet potentialities that wait For my heart's deep desire to fecundate I shall resume the search, if Fortune grants; And the great cities of the world shall yet Be golden frames for me in which to set New masterpieces of more rare romance.

BELLINGLISE

I

DEEP in the sloping forest that surrounds The head of a green valley that I know, Spread the fair gardens and ancestral grounds Of Bellinglise, the beautiful château. Through shady groves and fields of unmown grass, It was my joy to come at dusk and see, Filling a little pond's untroubled glass, Its antique towers and mouldering masonry. Oh, should I fall to-morrow, lay me here, That o'er my tomb, with each reviving year, Wood-flowers may blossom and the wood-doves croon; And lovers by that unrecorded place, Passing, may pause, and cling a little space, Close-bosomed, at the rising of the moon.

II

Here, where in happier times the huntsman's horn Echoing from far made sweet midsummer eves, Now serried cannon thunder night and morn, Tearing with iron the greenwood's tender leaves. Yet has sweet Spring no particle withdrawn Of her old bounty; still the song-birds hail, Even through our fusillade, delightful Dawn; Even in our wire bloom lilies of the vale. You who love flowers, take these; their fragile bells Have trembled with the shock of volleyed shells, And in black nights when stealthy foes advance They have been lit by the pale rockets' glow That o'er scarred fields and ancient towns laid low Trace in white fire the brave frontiers of France.

May 22, 1916.

LIEBESTOD

I WHO, conceived beneath another star, Had been a prince and played with life, instead Have been its slave, an outcast exiled far From the fair things my faith has merited. My ways have been the ways that wanderers tread And those that make romance of poverty— Soldier, I shared the soldier's board and bed, And Joy has been a thing more oft to me Whispered by summer wind and summer sea Than known incarnate in the hours it lies All warm against our hearts and laughs into our eyes.

I know not if in risking my best days I shall leave utterly behind me here This dream that lightened me through lonesome ways And that no disappointment made less dear; Sometimes I think that, where the hilltops rear Their white entrenchments back of tangled wire, Behind the mist Death only can make clear, There, like Brunhilde ringed with flaming fire, Lies what shall ease my heart's immense desire: There, where beyond the horror and the pain Only the brave shall pass, only the strong attain.

Truth or delusion, be it as it may, Yet think it true, dear friends, for, thinking so, That thought shall nerve our sinews on the day When to the last assault our bugles blow: Reckless of pain and peril we shall go, Heads high and hearts aflame and bayonets bare, And we shall brave eternity as though Eyes looked on us in which we would seem fair— One waited in whose presence we would wear, Even as a lover who would be well-seen, Our manhood faultless and our honor clean.

RESURGAM

EXILED afar from youth and happy love, If Death should ravish my fond spirit hence I have no doubt but, like a homing dove, It would return to its dear residence, And through a thousand stars find out the road Back into earthly flesh that was its loved abode.

A MESSAGE TO AMERICA

YOU have the grit and the guts, I know; You are ready to answer blow for blow You are virile, combative, stubborn, hard, But your honor ends with your own back-yard; Each man intent on his private goal, You have no feeling for the whole; What singly none would tolerate You let unpunished hit the state, Unmindful that each man must share The stain he lets his country wear, And (what no traveller ignores) That her good name is often yours.

You are proud in the pride that feels its might; From your imaginary height Men of another race or hue Are men of a lesser breed to you: The neighbor at your southern gate You treat with the scorn that has bred his hate. To lend a spice to your disrespect You call him the "greaser." But reflect! The greaser has spat on you more than once; He has handed you multiple affronts; He has robbed you, banished you, burned and killed; He has gone untrounced for the blood he spilled; He has jeering used for his bootblack's rag The stars and stripes of the gringo's flag;

And you, in the depths of your easy-chair— What did you do, what did you care? Did you find the season too cold and damp To change the counter for the camp? Were you frightened by fevers in Mexico? I can't imagine, but this I know— You are impassioned vastly more By the news of the daily baseball score Than to hear that a dozen countrymen Have perished somewhere in Darien, That greasers have taken their innocent lives And robbed their holdings and raped their wives.

Not by rough tongues and ready fists Can you hope to jilt in the modern lists. The armies of a littler folk Shall pass you under the victor's yoke, Sobeit a nation that trains her sons To ride their horses and point their guns— Sobeit a people that comprehends The limit where private pleasure ends And where their public dues begin, A people made strong by discipline Who are willing to give—what you've no mind to— And understand—what you are blind to— The things that the individual Must sacrifice for the good of all.

You have a leader who knows—the man Most fit to be called American, A prophet that once in generations Is given to point to erring nations Brighter ideals toward which to press And lead them out of the wilderness. Will you turn your back on him once again? Will you give the tiller once more to men Who have made your country the laughing-stock For the older peoples to scorn and mock, Who would make you servile, despised, and weak, A country that turns the other cheek, Who care not how bravely your flag may float, Who answer an insult with a note, Whose way is the easy way in all, And, seeing that polished arms appal Their marrow of milk-fed pacifist, Would tell you menace does not exist? Are these, in the world's great parliament, The men you would choose to represent Your honor, your manhood, and your pride, And the virtues your fathers dignified? Oh, bury them deeper than the sea In universal obloquy; Forget the ground where they lie, or write For epitaph: "Too proud to fight."

I have been too long from my country's shores To reckon what state of mind is yours, But as for myself I know right well I would go through fire and shot and shell And face new perils and make my bed In new privations, if ROOSEVELT led; But I have given my heart and hand To serve, in serving another land, Ideals kept bright that with you are dim; Here men can thrill to their country's hymn, For the passion that wells in the Marseillaise Is the same that fires the French these days, And, when the flag that they love goes by, With swelling bosom and moistened eye They can look, for they know that it floats there still By the might of their hands and the strength of their will, And through perils countless and trials unknown Its honor each man has made his own. They wanted the war no more than you, But they saw how the certain menace grew, And they gave two years of their youth or three The more to insure their liberty When the wrath of rifles and pennoned spears Should roll like a flood on their wrecked frontiers. They wanted the war no more than you, But when the dreadful summons blew And the time to settle the quarrel came

They sprang to their guns, each man was game; And mark if they fight not to the last For their hearths, their altars, and their past: Yea, fight till their veins have been bled dry For love of the country that will not die.

O friends, in your fortunate present ease (Yet faced by the self-same facts as these), If you would see how a race can soar That has no love, but no fear, of war, How each can turn from his private rôle That all may act as a perfect whole, How men can live up to the place they claim And a nation, jealous of its good name, Be true to its proud inheritance, Oh, look over here and learn from FRANCE!

INTRODUCTION AND CONCLUSION OF A LONG POEM

I HAVE gone sometimes by the gates of Death And stood beside the cavern through whose doors Enter the voyagers into the unseen. From that dread threshold only, gazing back, Have eyes in swift illumination seen Life utterly revealed, and guessed therein What things were vital and what things were vain. Know then, like a vast ocean from my feet Spreading away into the morning sky, I saw unrolled my vanished days, and, lo, Oblivion like a morning mist obscured Toils, trials, ambitions, agitations, ease, And like green isles, sun-kissed, with sweet perfume Loading the airs blown back from that dim gulf, Gleamed only through the all-involving haze The hours when we have loved and been beloved.

Therefore, sweet friends, as often as by Love You rise absorbed into the harmony Of planets singing round magnetic suns, Let not propriety nor prejudice Nor the precepts of jealous age deny What Sense so incontestably affirms;

Cling to the blessed moment and drink deep Of the sweet cup it tends, as there alone Were that which makes life worth the pain to live. What is so fair as lovers in their joy That dies in sleep, their sleep that wakes in joy? Caressing arms are their light pillows. They That like lost stars have wandered hitherto Lonesome and lightless through the universe, Now glow transfired at Nature's flaming core; They are the centre; constellated heaven Is the embroidered panoply spread round Their bridal, and the music of the spheres Rocks them in hushed epithalamium.

. . . . . . . .

I know that there are those whose idle tongues Blaspheme the beauty of the world that was So wondrous and so worshipful to me. I call them those that, in the palace where Down perfumed halls the Sleeping Beauty lay, Wandered without the secret or the key. I know that there are those, of gentler heart, Broken by grief or by deception bowed, Who in some realm beyond the grave conceive The bliss they found not here; but, as for me,

In the soft fibres of the tender flesh I saw potentialities of Joy Ten thousand lifetimes could not use. Dear Earth, In this dark month when deep as morning dew On thy maternal breast shall fall the blood Of those that were thy loveliest and thy best, If it be fate that mine shall mix with theirs, Hear this my natural prayer, for, purified By that Lethean agony and clad In more resplendent powers, I ask nought else Than reincarnate to retrace my path, Be born again of woman, walk once more Through Childhood's fragrant, flowery wonderland And, entered in the golden realm of Youth, Fare still a pilgrim toward the copious joys I savored here yet scarce began to sip; Yea, with the comrades that I loved so well Resume the banquet we had scarce begun When in the street we heard the clarion-call And each man sprang to arms—ay, even myself Who loved sweet Youth too truly not to share Its pain no less than its delight. If prayers Are to be prayed, lo, here is mine! Be this My resurrection, this my recompense!

ODE IN MEMORY OF THE AMERICAN
VOLUNTEERS FALLEN FOR FRANCE

(To have been read before the statue of Lafayette and Washington in Paris, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1916.)

I

AY, it is fitting on this holiday, Commemorative of our soldier dead, When—with sweet flowers of our New England May Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray— Their graves in every town are garlanded, That pious tribute should be given too To our intrepid few Obscurely fallen here beyond the seas. Those to preserve their country's greatness died; But by the death of these Something that we can look upon with pride Has been achieved, nor wholly unreplied Can sneerers triumph in the charge they make That from a war where Freedom was at stake America withheld and, daunted, stood aside.

II

Be they remembered here with each reviving spring, Not only that in May, when life is loveliest, Around Neuville-Saint-Vaast and the disputed crest Of Vimy, they, superb, unfaltering, In that fine onslaught that no fire could halt, Parted impetuous to their first assault; But that they brought fresh hearts and springlike too To that high mission, and 'tis meet to strew With twigs of lilac and spring's earliest rose The cenotaph of those Who in the cause that history most endears Fell in the sunny morn and flower of their young years.

III

Yet sought they neither recompense nor praise, Nor to be mentioned in another breath Than their blue coated comrades whose great days It was their pride to share—ay, share even to the death! Nay, rather, France, to you they rendered thanks (Seeing they came for honor, not for gain), Who, opening to them your glorious ranks, Gave them that grand occasion to excel, That chance to live the life most free from stain And that rare privilege of dying well.

IV

O friends! I know not since that war began From which no people nobly stands aloof If in all moments we have given proof Of virtues that were thought American. I know not if in all things done and said All has been well and good, Or if each one of us can hold his head As proudly as he should, Or, from the pattern of those mighty dead Whose shades our country venerates to-day, If we've not somewhat fallen and somewhat gone astray. But you to whom our land's good name is dear, If there be any here Who wonder if her manhood be decreased, Relaxed its sinews and its blood less red Than that at Shiloh and Antietam shed, Be proud of these, have joy in this at least, And cry: "Now heaven be praised That in that hour that most imperilled her, Menaced her liberty who foremost raised

Europe's bright flag of freedom, some there were Who, not unmindful of the antique debt, Came back the generous path of Lafayette; And when of a most formidable foe She checked each onset, arduous to stem— Foiled and frustrated them— On those red fields where blow with furious blow Was countered, whether the gigantic fray Rolled by the Meuse or at the Bois Sabot, Accents of ours were in the fierce mêlée; And on those furthest rims of hallowed ground Where the forlorn, the gallant charge expires, When the slain bugler has long ceased to sound, And on the tangled wires The last wild rally staggers, crumbles, stops, Withered beneath the shrapnel's iron showers:— Now heaven be thanked, we gave a few brave drops; Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops were ours."

V

There, holding still, in frozen steadfastness, Their bayonets toward the beckoning frontiers, They lie—our comrades—lie among their peers, Clad in the glory of fallen warriors, Grim clusters under thorny trellises, Dry, furthest foam upon disastrous shores, Leaves that made last year beautiful, still strewn Even as they fell, unchanged, beneath the changing moon; And earth in her divine indifference Rolls on, and many paltry things and mean Prate to be heard and caper to be seen. But they are silent, calm; their eloquence Is that incomparable attitude; No human presences their witness are, But summer clouds and sunset crimson-hued, And showers and night winds and the northern star. Nay, even our salutations seem profane, Opposed to their Elysian quietude; Our salutations calling from afar, From our ignobler plane And undistinction of our lesser parts: Hail, brothers, and farewell; you are twice blest, brave hearts. Double your glory is who perished thus, For you have died for France and vindicated us.