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 tho' no sculptured shaft
Immortalize each brave?
What tho' no monument epitaphed
Be built above each grave?
When marble wears away
And monuments are dust,
The songs that guard our soldiers' clay
Will still fulfil their trust.
With lifted head and stately tread,
Like stars that guard the skies,
Go watch each bed where rest the dead,
Brave songs, with sleepless eyes.
* * * * *
When falls the cause of Right,
The poet grasps his pen,
And in gleaming letters of living light
Transmits the truth to men.
Go, songs! he says who sings;
Go! tell the world this tale;
Bear it afar on your tireless wings:
The Right will yet prevail.
Songs! sound like the thunder's breath!
Boom o'er the world and say:
Brave men may die -- Right has no death!
Truth never shall pass away!
Go! sing thro' a nation's sighs!
Go! sob thro' a people's tears!
Sweep the horizons of all the skies,
And throb through a thousand years!
* * * * *
And the songs, with brave, sad face,
Go proudly down their way,
Wailing the loss of a conquered race
And waiting an Easter-day.
Away! away! like the birds,
They soar in their flight sublime;
And the waving wings of the poet's words
Flash down to the end of time.
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