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| ROOM for the dead! Your living hands may pile | |
| Treasures of art the stately tents within, | |
| Beauty may grace them with her richest smile, | |
| And genius there spontaneous plaudits win: | |
| But yet amidst the tumult and the din | 5 |
| Of gathering thousands, let me audience crave! | |
| Place claim I for the Dead—’twere mortal sin, | |
| When banners o’er our country’s treasures wave, | |
| Unmarked to leave the wealth, safe garnered in the grave. | |
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| The fields may furnish forth their lowing kine, | 10 |
| The forest spoils in rich abundance lie, | |
| The mellow fruitage of the clustered vine | |
| Mingle with flowers of every varied dye; | |
| Swart artisans their rival skill may try, | |
| And while the rhetorician wins the ear, | 15 |
| The pencil’s graceful shadows charm the eye; | |
| But yet, do not withhold the grateful tear | |
| For those, and for their works, who are not here. | |
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| Not here? O yes! our hearts their presence feel, | |
| Viewless, not voiceless; from the deepest shells | 20 |
| On memory’s shore harmonious echoes steal, | |
| And names which in the days gone by were spells | |
| Are blent with that soft music. If there dwells | |
| The spirit here our country’s fame to spread, | |
| While every breast with joy and triumph swells, | 25 |
| And earth reverberates to our measured tread, | |
| Banner and wreath will own our reverence for the Dead. | |
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| Look up! their walls enclose us. Look around! | |
| Who won the verdant meadows from the sea? | |
| Whose sturdy hands the noble highways wound | 30 |
| Through forest dense, o’er mountain, moor, and lea? | |
| Who spanned the streams? Tell me, whose work they be, | |
| The busy marts where commerce ebbs and flows? | |
| Who quelled the savage? And who spared the tree | |
| That pleasant shelter o’er the pathway throws? | 35 |
| Who made the land they loved to blossom as the rose? | |
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| Who, in frail barks, the ocean surge defied, | |
| And trained the race that live upon the wave? | |
| What shore so distant where they have not died? | |
| In every sea they found a watery grave. | 40 |
| Honour for ever to the true and brave, | |
| Who seaward led their sons with spirits high, | |
| Bearing the red-cross flag their fathers gave; | |
| Long as the billows flout the arching sky, | |
| They’ll seaward bear it still—to venture or to die. | 45 |
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| The Roman gathered in a stately urn | |
| The dust he honoured, while the sacred fire, | |
| Nourished by vestal hands, was made to burn | |
| From age to age. If fitly you’ld aspire, | |
| Honour the Dead; and let the sounding lyre | 50 |
| Recount their virtues in your festal hours. | |
| Gather their ashes; higher still, and higher | |
| Nourish the patriot flame that history dowers, | |
| And o’er the old men’s graves go strew your choicest flowers. | |
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