Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MINUTE MEN, by CLYDE ROBERTSON



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MINUTE MEN, by                    
First Line: A dead man on a windy dune
Last Line: "wrote in blood for liberty."
Subject(s): American Revolution


A dead man on a windy dune
Played on a pipe a sturdy tune.
A battered hat half hid his face
And the tattered coat he wore with grace
Proclaimed him a rebel, in his day.
It came about in the strangest way
That puzzled men heard the piper play
A long forgotten, sturdy tune
In a tattered coat on a windy dune
Under the flare of a blood-red moon.

And each man thought, as brave men will,
Of Lexington and Bunker Hill.
And his back grew straight and his heart grew bold
As he mused on the Minute Men of old.
And stranger still each eye could trace
Under the hat a comrade's face
And under the tattered coat a scar.
Blood had bought each stripe and star
That waved in the wind above the dune
And these were the words of the piper's tune:

"Why be grist in a grinding mill?
There are logs to hew and land to till
Now, if men but had the will.
Put hands to the plow! Raise high a shield
Of golden grain. Each harvest field
Is shot and shell on a wintry dawn.
Match whirring wheels with brain and brawn!
You were not born of weakling spawn.
Thumb back the musty pages, we
Wrote in blood for LIBERTY."





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