THE SOLDIER If I should die, think only this of me: In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; And think, this heart, all evil shed away, Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Rupert Brooke THE DEAD I Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! That men call age; and those who would have been, Their sons, they gave, their immortality. Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth, Honor has come back, as a king, to earth, THE DEAD II - Rupert Brooke These hearts were woven of human joys and cares, Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth. The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs, And sunset, and the colors of the earth. These had seen movement, and heard music; known Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended; Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone; Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended. There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter A width, a shining peace, under the night. IN FLANDERS FIELDS In Flanders fields the poppies blow Rupert Brooke That mark our place; and in the sky We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Take up our quarrel with the foe: -John McCrae GRASS Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: What place is this? Where are we now? I am the grass. Let me work.. -Carl Sandburg ABRAHAM LINCOLN (FOULLY ASSASSINATED, APRIL 14, 1865) You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face. His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, His lack of all we prize as debonair, Of power or will to shine, of art to please; You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh, Judging each step as though the way were plain; Reckless, so it could point its paragraph Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain, Beside this corpse that bears for winding-sheet Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer, My shallow judgment I had learned to rue, How humble, yet how hopeful, he could be; Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he, Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame. He went about his work - such work as few Ever had laid on head and heart and hand- Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow, If but that will we can arrive to know, Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill. So he went forth to battle, on the side That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's, As in his peasant boyhood he had plied His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights, The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil, The iron bark that turns the lumberer's ax, The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear,— Such were the needs that helped his youth to train: Rough culture - but such trees large fruit may bear, If but their stocks be of right girth and grain. So he grew up, a destined work to do, And he lived to do it: four long-suffering years' Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through, And then he heard the hisses change to cheers, The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, And took both with the same unwavering mood; Till, as he came on light, from darkling days, And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood, |