| |
| HOW little recks it where men lie, | |
| When once the moment’s past | |
| In which the dim and glazing eye | |
| Has looked on earth its last,— | |
| Whether beneath the sculptured urn | 5 |
| The coffined form shall rest, | |
| Or in its nakedness return | |
| Back to its mother’s breast! | |
| |
| Death is a common friend or foe, | |
| As different men may hold, | 10 |
| And at his summons each must go, | |
| The timid and the bold; | |
| But when the spirit, free and warm, | |
| Deserts it, as it must, | |
| What matter where the lifeless form | 15 |
| Dissolves again to dust? | |
| |
| The soldier falls ’mid corses piled | |
| Upon the battle-plain, | |
| Where reinless war-steeds gallop wild | |
| Above the mangled slain; | 20 |
| But though his corse be grim to see, | |
| Hoof-trampled on the sod, | |
| What recks it, when the spirit free | |
| Has soared aloft to God? | |
| |
| The coward’s dying eyes may close | 25 |
| Upon his downy bed, | |
| And softest hands his limbs compose, | |
| Or garments o’er them spread. | |
| But ye who shun the bloody fray, | |
| When fall the mangled brave, | 30 |
| Go—strip his coffin-lid away, | |
| And see him in his grave! | |
| |
| ’T were sweet, indeed, to close our eyes, | |
| With those we cherish near, | |
| And, wafted upwards by their sighs, | 35 |
| Soar to some calmer sphere. | |
| But whether on the scaffold high, | |
| Or in the battle’s van, | |
| The fittest place where man can die | |
| Is where he dies for man! | 40 |
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