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I do not know beneath what sky

Nor on what seas shall be thy fate;
I only know it shall be high,

I only know it shall be great.

Richard Hovey [1864-1900]

ON A SOLDIER FALLEN IN THE PHILIPPINES

STREETS of the roaring town,

Hush for him, hush, be still!

He comes, who was stricken down

Doing the word of our will.

Hush! Let him have his state.

Give him his soldier's crown,

The grists of trade can wait

Their grinding at the mill,

But he cannot wait for his honor, now the trumpet has been

blown.

Wreathe pride now for his granite brow, lay love on his breast of stone.

Toll! Let the great bells toll
Till the clashing air is dim,
Did we wrong this parted soul?
We will make it up to him.

Toll! Let him never guess

What work we set him to.

Laurel, laurel, yes;

He did what we bade him do.

Praise, and never a whispered hint but the fight he fought

was good;

Never a word that the blood on his sword was his country's own heart's-blood.

A flag for the soldier's bier

Who dies that his land may live;

O, banners, banners here,

That he doubt not nor misgive!

That he heed not from the tomb

The evil days draw near

When the nation, robed in gloom,

With its faithless past shall strive.

Let him never dream that his bullet's scream went wide of

its island mark,

Home to the heart of his darling land where she stumbled and sinned in the dark.

William Vaughn Moody [1869-1910]

AN ODE IN TIME OF HESITATION

WRITTEN AFTER SEEING AT BOSTON THE STATUE OF ROBERT GOULD SHAW, KILLED WHILE STORMING FORT WAGNER, JULY 18, 1863, AT THE HEAD OF THE FIRST ENLISTED NEGRO REGIMENT, THE 54th MASSACHUSETTS

I

BEFORE the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made

To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe,
And set here in the city's talk and trade

To the good memory of Robert Shaw,

This bright March morn I stand,

And hear the distant spring come up the land;
Knowing that what I hear is not unheard

Of this boy soldier and his negro band,
For all their gaze is fixed so stern ahead,

For all the fatal rhythm of their tread.

The land they died to save from death and shame
Trembles and waits, hearing the spring's great name,
And by her pangs these resolute ghosts are stirred.

II

Through street and mall the tides of people go
Heedless; the trees upon the Common show
No hint of green; but to my listening heart
The still earth doth impart

Assurance of her jubilant emprise,

And it is clear to my long-searching eyes

That love at last has might upon the skies.
The ice is runneled on the little pond;

A telltale patter drips from off the trees;
The air is touched with southland spiceries,
As if but yesterday it tossed the frond
Of pendant mosses where the live-oaks grow
Beyond Virginia and the Carolines,

Or had its will among the fruits and vines
Of aromatic isles asleep beyond

Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

III

Soon shall the Cape Ann children shout in glee,
Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse;
Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose
Go honking northward over Tennessee;
West from Oswego to Sault Sainte-Marie,
And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung,
And yonder where, gigantic, willful, young,
Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates,
With restless violent hands and casual tongue
Moulding her mighty fates,

The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen;
And like a larger sea, the vital green

Of springing wheat shall vastly be outflung
Over Dakota and the prairie states.
By desert people immemorial

On Arizonan mesas shall be done
Dim rites unto the thunder and the sun;
Nor shall the primal gods lack sacrifice
More splendid, when the white Sierras call
Unto the Rockies straightway to arise
And dance before the unveiled ark of the year,
Sounding their windy cedars as for shawms,
Unrolling rivers clear

For flutter of broad phylacteries;

While Shasta signals to Alaskan seas

That watch old sluggish glaciers downward creep To fling their icebergs thundering from the steep,

And Mariposa through the purple calms
Gazes at far Hawaii crowned with palms
Where East and West are met,-

A rich seal on the ocean's bosom set

To say that East and West are twain,

With different loss and gain:

The Lord hath sundered them; let them be sundered yet.

IV

Alas! what sounds are these that come
Sullenly over the Pacific seas,—

Sounds of ignoble battle, striking dumb
The season's half-awakened ecstasies?
Must I be humble, then,

Now when my heart hath need of pride?

Wild love falls on me from these sculptured men;

By loving much the land for which they died

I would be justified.

My spirit was away on pinions wide

To soothe in praise of her its passionate mood
And ease it of its ache of gratitude.

Too sorely heavy is the debt they lay
On me and the companions of my day.

I would remember now

My country's goodliness, make sweet her name.

Alas! what shade art thou

Of sorrow or of blame

Liftest the lyric leafage from her brow,

And pointest a slow finger at her shame?

V

Lies! lies! It cannot be! The wars we wage
Are noble, and our battles still are won

By justice for us, ere we lift the gage.
We have not sold our loftiest heritage.
The proud republic hath not stooped to cheat
And scramble in the market-place of war;

Her forehead weareth yet its solemn star.

Here is her witness: this, her perfect son,

This delicate and proud New England soul
Who leads despised men, with just-unshackled feet,
Up the large ways where death and glory meet,
To show all peoples that our shame is done,
That once more we are clean and spirit-whole.

VI

Crouched in the sea fog on the moaning sand
All night he lay, speaking some simple word
From hour to hour to the slow minds that heard,
Holding each poor life gently in his hand.
And breathing on the base rejected clay
Till each dark face shone mystical and grand
Against the breaking day;

And lo, the shard the potter cast away

Was grown a fiery chalice, crystal-fine,

Fulfilled of the divine

Great wine of battle wrath by God's ring-finger stirred.
Then upward, where the shadowy bastion loomed

Huge on the mountain in the wet sea light,
Whence now, and now, infernal flowerage bloomed,
Bloomed, burst, and scattered down its deadly seed,—
They swept, and died like freemen on the height,
Like freemen, and like men of noble breed;
And when the battle fell away at night
By hasty and contemptuous hands were thrust
Obscurely in a common grave with him
The fair-haired keeper of their love and trust.
Now limb doth mingle with dissolvèd limb
In nature's busy old democracy

To flush the mountain laurel when she blows

Sweet by the southern sea,

And heart with crumpled heart climbs in the rose:-
The untaught hearts with the high heart that knew

This mountain fortress for no earthly hold

Of temporal quarrel, but the bastion old

Of spiritual wrong,

Built by an unjust nation sheer and strong,

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