Decoration Day.
Our heroes were plain men, such men as now
Work at the bench or labor at the plow;Rough spoken often, subject to such needs,
Not over wise, and with no prescient thought
Of all the enduring good their labor wrought.
Our heroes were plain men and you may meet
Their counterpart this hour on yonder street.
But when war came and when our nation called
Loud on the sons long nurtured at her breast,They did not wait but with their bosoms walled
Her safety harmless from the fierce contest.
Here was a father, wife and children held
His care and labor with domestic ties;
There was a youth whose filial strength supplies.
Here in a son some sire beheld renewed
His own remembered youth unreft by years,
Of its bright-hearted fancies, rain-bow-hued,
With hopes untouched by doubts undimmed by fears;
There early manhood felt the holy flame
Of honest love and yielded to its spell,
Told the sweet story, plead the tender claim
And, having won, still lingered to retell.
The nation called and bade them leave behind
All these kind tasks that gentler arts suggest
That habit made congenial to the mind
And close affection welcome to the breast.
She called them on to duty with no lure
But hardships, dangers, wounds perhaps, and death.
She bought their services with no bribes, secure
In the devotion nurtured with their breath.
The patriot soldier who, all cares aside,
His willing service o the Nation gave
Who, striving for a noble purpose died,
Deserves, at least, an unforgotten grave.
What though no mystic colors of romance
Nor antique state invest his honest glory.
Can names, or robes, or centuries enhance
The sober pathos of his simple story.
Not a stout knight
Armored for fight,
Roving creation in quest of the grail,
Prince he was not
Noble, nor what
Worldliness honors. Homely the tale
Told of his living,
Told of his death,
Told of his giving
For us his breath.
He was a son and he was a brother,
He had a father, a sister, a mother,When the alarms
Summoned to arms
Tears and embraces he gave them at leaving.
Promised, to lighten the weight of their grieving
That he would write,
That in the fight
He would be prudent, not reckless for fame.
Mother stood last,
There as he passed,
Kissed him and called him a dear, childish name,
Blessed him and prayed,
There as he staid;
Only a moment, his comrades were starting,
Watched him far down
The streets of the town,
And wept, as she turned from the parting.
Dreams he had too
Hopeful, of dangerLittle he knew,
He was a stranger
To fear or to pain.
He would remain
Scathless, the men falling around.
Honors he’d win,
Again and again,
He would be found
At the fierce storming the earliest in.
He would return famous and great,
Known in the state,
Many would meet him
There at the gate,
They would await,
Father and mother and sister, to greet him.
These were his dreams
Confident. How
Pitiful seems
All of it now?
Weekly the paper came to the farm,
Closesly they turned and scanned it,Sometimes a letter lulled the alarm
Or a rumor of battle fanned it.
Ever at night the father would ask
When he wearily came from his lonely task,
If any word
Had been heard
Of the soldier boy who was still their care,
And they sat at evening and wondered where
The night had found him
And if around him
The weather were foul or fair.
Death came to him sudden and painless,
Leaving his record stainless,A bullet’s whiz and a fall – no more;
A ghastly face and a pool of gore,
A glance from the comrades hurrying by,
A stiffening hand and a glazing eye,
A choking sob for a last good-bye,
And coldly he lay with his face to the sky.
‘Twas long ere they heard on the quiet farm
That aught had happened of ill or harmAnd they talked and planned
Of the cattle and land,
But of him far more, far more,
And never knew,
Till a month was through,
Of the ghastly face and the pool of gore.
Oh soldier of Freedom, Oh soldier of truth,
Who poured on their altars the gift of thy youth,Soft be thy sleep, peaceful and deep
Prove thy long rest, for thy labors are over;
Sleep, sleep, silently creep
O’er thee wild grasses and blossoming clover,
Sleep, sleep, others may keep
Wearisome watch in the home that was thine;
Slumber, sleep, others may weep,
Thou hast partaken the one anodyne.
The war is over the wheat fields spread,
Tanned in the sun, where the shot went screaming
And the ground bird nests where the lonely dead
Lay in the long grass, cold and undreaming;
The trampled herbage grows rank and tall
On fields that were red with the stain of battle,
On hills that echoed the bugle’s call
The sheep bell sounds and the low of cattle.
The years have peacefully flown since then
And healed the hearts that were heavy with sorrow,
Springs have blossomed, again and again,
Time has o’ertaken full many a morrow;
But yet in the days of the lilacs blooming,
When the thought goes back as it always will,
When the doors stand wide and the wild bees’ booming
Sounds through the air that is soft and still,
When the boughs new-leaved and the sunshine blending
In light and in shade on the verdure below,
Weave shimmering shapes, and the days and their ending
Go after the sun unwilling and slow,
When the streamlets are full and the blithe birds are nesting
And the meadows hold upwards their daintiest birth,
Till a glad dream of Eden seems new-come, and resting
Its balm and its blessing awhile on the earth,
Then tenderness wakes with a faithful emotion
For those who still hold us deep bound in their debt,
As the memory comes back of their martial devotion
And we pause to remember, to weep and regret.
The pangs of first loss have been lulled by the season,
Whose wings could not fan all our sorrow to rest
And the hopes of religion, the counsels of reason,
And breathed by the fields, in their new beauty dressed.
Yet the duty is sacred that rests on our nation,
Which takes all its blessings inwrought with a trust,
A charge that descends on each new generation,
And binds us to honor their names and their dust.
Then ye who are older, with heads growing hoary,
Who saw the dark days when our danger was nigh,
And ye who are young but have heard the brave store,
Repeat it, repeat it, nor stop till you die.
And ye who come after, for whom are created
The years yet unborn, with their wonders unguessed,
Retell the brave tale that your fathers created,
And garland the graves where our dead heroes rest.
Still meet in the May-light, beneath the blue heaven,
In the face of the people, the eye of the sun,
And give to the lives in a noble cause given
The honor, undying, that, dying, they won.
Charles Noble Gregory.
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