Classic Poem

 U NTO thy golden sands,
Bright tropic country of my love, once more
I come with exiled feet—how travel-sore!—
 From cold and distant lands.

 Brightly the sun still shines;
'Midst living green, white blow the magnol-flowers;
The mocking-bird, throughout the circling hours,
 Sings in the clustering vines;

 Fair as Damascus gleam
The city gardens in their opulence
Of rose and myrtle, flooding sight and sense;
 And hill and glen and stream

 Glint in meridian light,
Or smile beneath the full and silvery moon,
As if no black eclipse could blot the noon,
 No tempest blight the night.

 O gentlest friend! We sit
Beneath these drooping elms; the wind blows sweet
Among our Pæstum roses; bright and fleet
 The finches sing and flit;

 Yet wearily we turn
From their soft wooings to these hallowed grounds
Along whose silent, consecrated mounds
 The fires of sunset burn.

 What shall I say to thee
Of him, the patriot just? how, stammering, tell
The virtues of that heart now resting well
 Beneath the myrtle-tree?

 From blue Atlantic's bound
To the deep Bravo's mango-bordered shore,
His trumpet 'midst the battle's shifting roar
 Gave no uncertain sound;

 But, firm and true and clear,
Cautioned the rash, inspirited the weak,
Rebuked the venal, nor forgot to speak
 Rare, noble words of cheer

 To brave men fainting white
In hospital wards, to children in their tears,
To women strong in faith and strange to fears,
 Toiling by day and night;

 And when disaster dire
Furled the red cross whose light had dazed the world,
His voice was first to blunt the arrows hurled
 By a flushed conqueror's ire.

 And these—what shall I say
Of these, in battle-order side by side
Drawn up, to wait that time which shall decide
 Where Right and Honour lay?

 Dark day of overthrow,
Vulnus immedicabile! for thee,
If in the future's Gilead there be
 A balsam yet to grow,

 Its healing shoot will spring
From holy lives laid down for freedom's sake,
From bold emprise whose clashing song shall make
 The echoing ages ring;

 Its blessing will distil
From haunts made classic by heroic deeds,
From Shiloh's plain, from Chickamauga's reeds,
 From Malvern's bloody hill.

 How proud these memories vast!
Giving us each a dignity and strength
Not born of earth. They make us one, at length,
 With the dim, fabulous past.

 Gathered from each red plain,
Brave, silent phalanx! kneeling by your graves
I hear the rush of those eternal waves
 Whose hymn has one refrain.

 Ay—vanquished though we be—
O heart! beat rhythmic with my sorrow!— ye
Are of the Heraclidæ—mount and sea
 Attest your high degree.

 Another classic age
Dawns from Potomac to the Mexique strand;
With Hector and Leonidas ye stand
 On history's blazoned page;

 And from the sulphurous rim
Of black defeat, ye join the deathless shapes
Whose giant forms, like cloud-girt mountain-capes,
 Loom through the centuries dim.

 Let bloated, vain Success
Be worshipped by the millions of To-day;
Righteous Defeat, uncrowned, hath silent sway
 To-morrow will confess.

 Strike deep, though silently,
O Southern oaks, your roots in Southern ground,
And lift, O palm and laurel, victor-crowned,
 Your branches to the sky;

 The river's heaving floods,
The mountain-tops, the steadfast stars shall say
Unto the cycling ages, In that day ,
 Lo! there were demi-gods!