In many homes One sees old shrapnel cases Converted into lamps; Think of it! The canisters that carried wholesale death Now hold the warm glow of light! Old forts, old positions Once fiercely defended Now are overgrown with the beautiful green Of Nature's mantle of grass. And the shell-pocked fields And scarred hill-sides Now are healed With the waving gold of millet And buckwheat. They say a dreadful blotch of blood On Hill two hundred and three, A stain on the face of the earth, Fifty feet by thirty, Has been washed clean and sweet By God's patient rains. ... GRASS CARL SANDBURG Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo, Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg, And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun, Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: What place is this? Where are we now? I am the grass. Let me work. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE FRIENDLY WOOD by PAUL VALERY SAINT AGNES' EVE by ALFRED TENNYSON GREENES FUNERALLS: SONNET 6 by RICHARD BARNFIELD THREE PASTORAL ELEGIES: 1 by WILLIAM BASSE DEDICATIONS AND INSCRIPTIONS: 8. BEAM-VERSES AT WELL KNOWE by GORDON BOTTOMLEY THE FLOWERING TREE by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES |