| |
| THE SAME good blood that now refills | |
| The dotard Orient’s shrunken veins, | |
| The same whose vigor westward thrills, | |
| Bursting Nevada’s silver chains, | |
| Poured here upon the April grass, | 5 |
| Freckled with red the herbage new; | |
| On reeled the battle’s trampling mass, | |
| Back to the ash the bluebird flew. | |
| |
| Poured here in vain;—that sturdy blood | |
| Was meant to make the earth more green, | 10 |
| But in a higher, gentler mood | |
| Than broke this April noon serene; | |
| Two graves are here: to mark the place, | |
| At head and foot, an unhewn stone, | |
| O’er which the herald lichens trace | 15 |
| The blazon of Oblivion. | |
| |
| These men were brave enough, and true | |
| To the hired soldier’s bull-dog creed; | |
| What brought them here they never knew, | |
| They fought as suits the English breed: | 20 |
| They came three thousand miles, and died, | |
| To keep the Past upon its throne; | |
| Unheard, beyond the ocean tide, | |
| Their English mother made her moan. | |
| |
| The turf that covers them no thrill | 25 |
| Sends up to fire the heart and brain; | |
| No stronger purpose nerves the will, | |
| No hope renews its youth again: | |
| From farm to farm the Concord glides, | |
| And trails my fancy with its flow; | 30 |
| O’erhead the balanced hen-hawk slides, | |
| Twinned in the river’s heaven below. | |
| |
| But go, whose Bay State bosom stirs, | |
| Proud of thy birth and neighbor’s right, | |
| Where sleep the heroic villagers | 35 |
| Borne red and stiff from Concord fight; | |
| Thought Reuben, snatching down his gun, | |
| Or Seth, as ebbed the life away, | |
| What earthquake rifts would shoot and run | |
| World-wide from that short April fray? | 40 |
| |
| What then? With heart and hand they wrought, | |
| According to their village light; | |
| ’T was for the Future that they fought, | |
| Their rustic faith in what was right. | |
| Upon earth’s tragic stage they burst | 45 |
| Unsummoned, in the humble sock; | |
| Theirs the fifth act; the curtain first | |
| Rose long ago on Charles’s block. | |
| |
| Their graves have voices: if they threw | |
| Dice charged with fates beyond their ken, | 50 |
| Yet to their instincts they were true, | |
| And had the genius to be men. | |
| Fine privilege of Freedom’s host, | |
| Of even foot-soldiers for the Right!— | |
| For centuries dead, ye are not lost, | 55 |
| Your graves send courage forth, and might. | |
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