Ode

I sometimes fancy that, were I king

Of the princely Knights of the Golden Ring,
With the song of the minstrel in mine ear,
And the tender legend that trembles here,
I'd give the best on his bended knee,
The whitest soul of my chivalry,

For Little Giffen of Tennessee.

2249

Francis Orray Ticknor [1822-1874]

ODE

Sung on the occasion of decorating the graves of the Confederate dead, at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S. C., 1867.

SLEEP Sweetly in your humble graves,
Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause;
Though yet no marble column craves
The pilgrim here to pause.

In seeds of laurel in the earth

The blossom of your fame is blown,
And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
The shaft is in the stone!

Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years

Which keep in trust your storied tombs,
Behold! your sisters bring their tears,
And these memorial blooms.

Small tributes! but your shades will smile
More proudly on these wreaths to-day,
Than when some cannon-moulded pile
Shall overlook this bay.

Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies,
By mourning beauty crowned!

Henry Timrod (1829-1867]

SENTINEL SONGS

WHEN falls the soldier brave,
Dead at the feet of wrong,
The poet sings and guards his grave
With sentinels of song.

Songs, march! he gives command,

Keep faithful watch and true;

The living and dead of the Conquered Land Have now no guards save you.

Gray Ballads! mark ye well!

Thrice holy is your trust!

Go! halt by the fields where warriors fell;

Rest arms! and guard their dust.

List! Songs! your watch is long,

The soldiers' guard was brief;

Whilst right is right, and wrong is wrong,
Ye may not seek relief.

Go! wearing the gray of grief!

Go! watch o'er the Dead in Gray!

Go! guard the private and guard the chief, And sentinel their clay!

And the songs, in stately rhyme,

And with softly-sounding tread,

Go forth, to watch for a time-a time

Where sleep the Deathless Dead.

And the songs, like funeral dirge,

In music soft and low,

Sing round the graves, whilst hot tears surge

From hearts that are homes of woe.

What though no sculptured shaft

Immortalize each brave?

What though no monument epitaphed
Be built above each grave?

Heroes

When marble wears away,

And monuments are dust,

The songs that guard our soldiers' clay
Will still fulfil their trust.

With lifted head, and steady tread,
Like stars that guard the skies,

Go watch each bed, where rest the dead,
Brave Songs, with sleepless eyes.

2251

Abram J. Ryan [1839-1888]

HEROES

THE winds that once the Argo bore
Have died by Neptune's ruined shrines,
And her hull is the drift of the deep-sea floor,
Though shaped of Pelion's tallest pines.
You may seek her crew on every isle
Fair in the foam of Ægean seas,
But, out of their rest, no charm can wile
Jason and Orpheus and Hercules.

And Priam's wail is heard no more
By windy Ilion's sea-built walls;
Nor great Achilles, stained with gore,
Shouts, "O ye gods, 'tis Hector falls!"
On Ida's mount is the shining snow,

But Jove has gone from its brow away;
And red on the plain the poppies grow
Where Greek and Trojan fought that day.

Mother Earth, are the heroes dead?

Do they thrill the soul of the years no more?
Are the gleaming snows and the poppies red
All that is left of the brave of yore?
Are there none to fight as Theseus fought,
Far in the young world's misty dawn?
Or to teach as gray-haired Nestor taught?
Mother Earth, are the heroes gone?

Gone? In a grander form they rise.

Dead? We may clasp their hands in ours, And catch the light of their clearer eyes,

And wreathe their brows with immortal flowers. Wherever a noble deed is done,

'Tis the pulse of a hero's heart is stirred;

Wherever Right has a triumph won,

There are the heroes' voices heard.

Their armor rings on a fairer field

Than Greek and Trojan fiercely trod;
For Freedom's sword is the blade they wield,
And the gleam above is the smile of God.
So, in his isle of calm delight,

Jason may sleep the years away;

For the heroes live, and the sky is bright,
And the world is a braver world to-day.

Edna Dean Proctor [1838

THE DAWN OF PEACE

YES-"on our brows we feel the breath
Of Dawn," though in the night we wait!
An arrow is in the heart of Death!

A God is at the doors of Fate!
The Spirit that moved upon the Deep
Is moving through the minds of men;
The nations feel it in their sleep.

A change has touched their dreams again.

Voices, confused and faint, arise,

Troubling their hearts from east and west.

A doubtful light is in their skies,

A gleam that will not let them rest! The dawn, the dawn is on the wing, The stir of change on every side, Unsignalled as the approach of spring, Invincible as the hawthorn tide.

The Dawn of Peace

Have ye not heard it, far and nigh,

The voice of France across the dark,
And all the Atlantic with one cry
Beating the shores of Europe?-hark!
Then, if ye will, uplift your word
Of cynic wisdom! Once again
Tell us He came to bring a sword.

Tell us He lived and died in vain.

Say that we dream! Our dreams have woven
Truths that outface the burning sun;
The lightnings, that we dreamed, have cloven
Time, space, and linked all lands in one!
Dreams! But their swift celestial fingers
Have knit the world with threads of steel,
Till no remotest island lingers

Outside the world's great commonweal.

2253

common sense"!

Tell us that custom, sloth and fear
Are strong, then name them "
Tell us that greed rules everywhere,

Then dub the lie "experience."
Year after year, age after age,

Has handed down, through fool and child, For earth's divinest heritage

The dreams whereon old wisdom smiled.

Dreams are they? But ye cannot stay them,
Or thrust the dawn back for one hour!
Truth, Love and Justice, if ye slay them,

Return with more than earthly power;

Strive, if ye will, to scal the fountains

That send the spring through leaf and spray; Drive back the sun from the eastern mountains, Then-bid this mightier movement stay.

The hour of Peace is come! The nations
From east to west have heard a cry,
"Through all earth's blood-red generations
By hate and slaughter climbed thus high,