Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE LOST FAITH, by ROBERT FROST



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

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First Line: We shrine our fathers as their wars recede
Last Line: So true in passing, if it must be past.
Subject(s): Fathers; War; Transience; Past; Death


We shrine our fathers as their wars recede
With the heroic dead that died of old,
We shall strew flowers for them year after year;
They shall have flowers themselves more than they need!
But for the cause that was to them so dear,
Where shall it be so much as justly told
What the cause was? -- which, as they lie in mould,
In our hearts dies as cold.
Have we for that no flowers, no mournful rhythm,
The soldiers' dream, that when they died, died with them?

No less a dream than of one law of love,
One equal people under God above!
But fallen to be a word of easy scorn,
See if it dies not -- if it is not dead!
Who in our latter wisdom so unread
As not to know
Dark life too well for such a dream of morn,
What child so uninured to literal woe?
The Californian, by the western sea
Exults, and by the Gulf they laugh,
Saying, 'How can all men be free,
How equal, when God made them wheat and chaff?'
They mock, that, in these recreant hearts of ours,
There should no fingering answer be,
And where it sprung the dream at last should fade
That did defy their powers.

Too strange it seems to men of the dull throng
That such belief can have been soldier's shroud
More glorious than his battle colors proud.
Yet how they do them wrong!
'Twere not enough to reckon the men brave,
'Twere not enough to reckon the men strong,
Not with the men themselves, -- far more they crave
One tribute to the meaning of their strife,
To which they gave youth, life.

It was the dream that woke them in the north,
And led the young men forth,
And pitched against the embittered foe their tent;
And fought their fight for them on many a field,
Their sword, their shield,
The still small voice that like a clarion pealed;
Strong as a dream and deathless as a dream,
As it did seem,
(Though destined to go down the way they went.)

The dream that, as it sent them on that way,
Gave Love the strength to stay
In these brave hills apart --
It, and naught else, for many a fireside heart!

Oh, such a dream as cannot have lost worth
Forever, for an unredeemed earth.
I cannot make it wholly dead to men.
Not late, but soon, it must return again --
In blood mayhap, with maddening fife and drum,
And reaping souls -- I care not, so it come!
All beautiful and human as it was,
It could be terrible in its own cause;
As when it swept the skirts of Malvern Hill
And when it crouched in wait as deadly still
On Gettysburg's low height,
As the oncoming foe were swift and shrill.
Men knew us not until that wavering fight!
And keep not now the thought that moved in us!
How earthly death came ever near to touch
A dream so deathless, we to forget it thus,
I do not know; we saw it fade from sight,
Not while we slept, but while we strove too much
For things that were not beautiful and bright.

But fair it seems in passing as still day
In fainter gold behind the golden stars,
Or mists on water that the morning ray,
Without a seeming zephyr, moves away;
And truer in comparison of truth,
Than all the hopes the years abate from youth;
Truer than aught recovered from the vast
By souls that could not slumber, but must climb
The starlight in far suns to dwell a time --
So true in passing, if it must be past.





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