Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, COMMEMORATION ODE, by KARL MYERS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

COMMEMORATION ODE, by                    
First Line: Man has not lost, in whatsoever night
Last Line: And wreathe the laurel with the asphodel.
Subject(s): American Civil War; Garnett, Robert Selden (1819-1861); Monuments; U.s. - History


(On the Unveiling of the Monument Commemorating the Battle of Corrick's Ford and the Death of
Gen. Robert S. Garnett, June, 1861.)

Man has not lost, in whatsoever night,
The faith that darkness ends in lasting light.
And so this tall, gray column typifies
The strong, upright and purer souls of men;
The souls that live again
In what immortal joy, in what bright skies!

Proudly it rears
Its head above the shadows of dead years
Into the sunlight of a kinder day,
With the old passions passed away
Through Time's long wisdom into peace of tears.
And yet, this granite stone,
I say, memorializes not alone
One man's heroic death, one skirmish lost and won.
Who looks upon this monument has seen
That vast, magnanimous, forgiving heart
That is our country's, and has always been,
Of which our great, slain Leader had so large a part.

Look, questing eye, throughout the world elsewhere:
You shall not see
The love that outlives war, and at the end
Lifts up the fallen foe, and says: "My friend!"
Binds up the bleeding wounds with tender care,
Pins on the vanquished breast fame's medals rare,
And whispers: "Come with me,
In newer bonds of brotherhood to share
The spirit of the richer life to be."

This long, slim finger pointing to the sky;
These flags that in unblemished splendor fly
Above these sons of blue and gray,
That spirit, here today,
In fullest reverence exemplify.

No more shall flash the fratricidal sword
At quiet Corrick's Ford.
No more the fragile flowers of spring shall feel
The cannon's iron wheel.
Nay -- but for things more tender and divine
The silent tongue of flowers shall serve us well
The fittest thoughts of memory to tell,
As with the amaranths we roses twine,
And wreathe the laurel with the asphodel.





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