| WHEN Fort Sumter fell and the war came | |
| I cried out in bitterness of soul: | |
| “O glorious republic now no more!” | |
| When they buried my soldier son | |
| To the call of trumpets and the sound of drums | 5 |
| My heart broke beneath the weight | |
| Of eighty years, and I cried: | |
| “Oh, son who died in a cause unjust! | |
| In the strife of Freedom slain!” | |
| And I crept here under the grass. | 10 |
| And now from the battlements of time, behold: | |
| Thrice thirty million souls being bound together | |
| In the love of larger truth, | |
| Rapt in the expectation of the birth | |
| Of a new Beauty, | 15 |
| Sprung from Brotherhood and Wisdom. | |
| I with eyes of spirit see the Transfiguration | |
| Before you see it. | |
| But ye infinite brood of golden eagles nesting ever higher, | |
| Wheeling ever higher, the sun-light wooing | 20 |
| Of lofty places of Thought, | |
| Forgive the blindness of the departed owl. | |
