Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MEMORIAL DAY, by EDWARD NOYES POMEROY



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MEMORIAL DAY, by                    
First Line: Again it is memorial day
Last Line: On decoration day.
Subject(s): Death; Heroism; Holidays; Memorial Day; Soldiers; Veterans; Dead, The; Heroes; Heroines; Declaration Day


Again it is Memorial Day
How sweet and sad the hours
While love and grief are holding sway,
And turf that covers sacred clay
We decorate with flowers.

The memory of comrades brave
We meet to celebrate;
Who fought and bled the State to save,
Who died to liberate the slave,
Nor dreamed their deed was great.

But they deserve a patriot's name
And immortality;
And deeds as great for them we claim,
As lifted Salamis to fame
And proud Thermopylæ.

But yesterday and they were here;
Their tide of life ran high;
Well we recall their ringing cheer,
Their answer, as a clarion clear,
Their last, not sad, good by.

Fearless with us they went away
Expecting to return;
And while the drum and bugle play,
Reviving memories of that day,
Old fires within us burn.

The vanished past returns again;
The present is a dream;
Our shrunken ranks are full as then;
These scattered ashes, arméd men
Whose bristling bayonets gleam.

We live our army lives once more;
Beneath heaven's tent we dwell;
The leaden rain begins to pour,
The hungry guns to growl and roar,
While scream the shot and shell.

Again we're on a field of slain,
And grieving stars look down;
Silenced is every wall of pain;
The battle's tide has ebbed amain,
Whose flow high hopes did drown.

Again we hear the long-roll beat,
The quick command "fall in,"
Again we breast the deadly sleet,
Again the foeman's onset meet,
Sustain the shock and win.

But friends, this is the nation's day
To honor all the brave,
To interblend the "blue" and "gray,"
And deck them with the bloom of May,
For Hate is in its grave.

The barbarous days of war are done;
Peace broodeth like a dove;
Conflict with self is but begun;
Let greater victories here be won,
Let us forgive and love;

In spite of wrong we suffered then,—
Fort Pillow's cruel guile,
And Georgia's monstrous prison-pen
That loathsome creatures made of men,
And "Libby" and "Belle Isle."

The Union saved and Slavery dead!
What could we ask beside?
For these fair Liberty had pled,
For these Humanity had bled,
For these great Lincoln died.

Brothers, our lives are in the past,
Yet we have no regret;
For, though our ranks are thinning fast
And praise did not its day outlast,
The flag is flying yet;

It flies above the Capitol,
And o'er the soldier's grave;
It floats o'er Sumter's crumbling wall;
It waves throughout the nation-all—
Forever may it wave;

May this observance never cease;
May words like these be said,
Till the impatient years' increase
Brings the Millenium of Peace,
And War and Wrong are dead.

Brothers, our sun is sinking low;
The western twilight nears;
Our faces men soon will not know,
Already we can hear the flow
Of the Eternal Years.

No fame is ours; men have forgot,
Or seldom call to mind,
The soldiers screened from deadly shot,
Nor care we, for it matters not
Who fame or favor find.

The Hand that held us in our place,
The Everlasting Arms,
That parted us from death's embrace,
The God that kept us by His grace
Will shield us still from harm;

And, by and by, it may be, some
With wreaths and garlands gay,
And sweet-voiced fife and stirring drum,
To crown our grassy graves will come
On Decoration Day.





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