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Home  »  Specimens of American Poetry  »  James Gates Percival (1795–1856)

Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.

By The Graves of the Patriots

James Gates Percival (1795–1856)

HERE rest the great and good—here they repose

After their generous toil. A sacred band,

They take their sleep together, while the year

Comes with its early flowers to deck their graves,

And gathers them again, as winter frowns.

Theirs is no vulgar sepulchre—green sods

Are all their monument, and yet it tells

A nobler history, than pillar’d piles,

Or the eternal pyramids. They need

No statue nor inscription to reveal

Their greatness. It is round them, and the joy

With which their children tread the hallowed ground

That holds their venerated bones, the peace

That smiles on all they fought for, and the wealth

That clothes the land they rescued,—these, though mute,

As feeling ever is when deepest,—these

Are monuments more lasting, than the fanes

Rear’d to the kings and demigods of old.

Touch not the ancient elms, that bend their shade

Over their lowly graves; beneath their boughs

There is a solemn darkness, even at noon,

Suited to such as visit at the shrine

Of serious liberty. No factious voice

Call’d them unto the field of generous fame,

But the pure consecrated love of home.

No deeper feeling sways us, when it wakes

In all its greatness. It has told itself

To the astonish’d gaze of awe-struck kings,

At Marathon, at Bannockburn, and here,

Where first our patriots sent the invader back

Broken and cowed. Let these green elms be all

To tell us where they fought, and where they lie.

Their feelings were all nature, and they need

No art to make them known. They live in us,

While we are like them, simple, hardy, bold,

Worshipping nothing but our own pure hearts,

And the one universal Lord. They need

No column pointing to the heaven they sought,

To tell us of their home. The heart itself,

Left to its own free purpose, hastens there,

And there alone reposes. Let these elms

Bend their protecting shadow o’er their graves,

And build with their green roof the only fane,

Where we may gather on the hallow’d day,

That rose to them in blood, and set in glory.

Here let us meet, and while our motionless lips

Give not a sound, and all around is mute

In the deep sabbath of a heart too full

For words or tears—here let us strew the sod

With the first flowers of spring, and make to them

An offering of the plenty, Nature gives,

And they have render’d ours—perpetually.