And, if spared, and growing older, By communion of the banner,— Children of one Church are we. CHARLES G. HALPINE IN MEMORY. OLD Greece hath her Thermopyla, The graves of glorious Marathon Oh, not alone the hoary Past Make sweet our sickened air; Swords tried as that Excalibur Which graced King Arthur's thigh, What time our battle instincts stir, Who sowed his savage epoch thick Coeur-de-Leons on every field, Through whose dear helping stands revealed Compassed by whose assuring loves, Our comrades dared and died As blithely as a bridegroom moves To meet his waiting bride. Though tears be salt, and wormwood still Is bitter to the taste, God's heart is tender, and He will Let no life fail or waste. O mothers of our Gracchi! when Grew rich in boundless hope. Renown stands mute beside the graves No poet hoards their humble names But not the less the darkness flames Beneath the outward havoc, they Athwart the bloody horizon They marked God's blazing sword, And heard His dreadful thunders run Shield-bearers of the Sovran Truth! Her consecrated beads. You thrill us with the calms which flow In Eucharistic wine; And by your straight tall lives we know RICHARD REALF. A DIRGE. Low lies in dust the honored head, And lay them down without a word. What is there to be said or done? Their race is run, their crowns are won, Cut off by fate before their prime Could harvest half the golden years, Would they were here, or we were there, RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. LINES FROM "COMMEMORATION ODE." [Recited at the Harvard Commemoration, July 21, 1865.] WE sit here in the Promised Land That flows with Freedom's honey and milk; But 'twas they won it, sword in hand, Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk. We welcome back our bravest and our best ;- I sweep them for a paan, but they wane Into a dirge, and die away in pain. In these brave ranks I only see the gaps, Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps, Dark to the triumph which they died to gain : Fitlier may others greet the living, For me the past is unforgiving; I with uncovered head Salute the sacred dead, Who went, and who return not.-Say not so! And to the saner mind We rather seem the dead that stayed behind. We feel the orient of their spirit glow, Of all our saintlier aspiration; They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted ways, Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation! Not in anger, not in pride, Pure from passion's mixture rude But with far-heard gratitude, Still with heart and voice renewed, To heroes living and dear martyrs dead, The strain should close that consecrates our brave. Lift the heart and lift the head! Through whose heart in such an hour "Tis no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, Till the basest can no longer cower, Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. Come back, then, noble pride, for 'tis her dower! How could poet ever tower, If his passions, hopes, and fears, If his triumphs and his tears, Kept not measure with his people? Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves ! |