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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=416849" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Silent Victors</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">MAY 30, 1878, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Dying for victory, cheer on cheer<br>Thundered on his eager ear.<br>--CHARLES L. HOLSTEIN.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Deep, tender, firm and true, the Nation's heart<br>Throbs for her gallant heroes passed away,<br>Who in grim Battle's drama played their part,<br>And slumber here to-day.--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Warm hearts that beat their lives out at the shrine<br>Of Freedom, while our country held its breath<br>As brave battalions wheeled themselves in line<br>And marched upon their death:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When Freedom's Flag, its natal wounds scarce healed,<br>Was torn from peaceful winds and flung again<br>To shudder in the storm of battle-field--<br>The elements of men,--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When every star that glittered was a mark<br>For Treason's ball, and every rippling bar<br>Of red and white was sullied with the dark<br>And purple stain of war:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When angry guns, like famished beasts of prey,<br>Were howling o'er their gory feast of lives,<br>And sending dismal echoes far away<br>To mothers, maids, and wives:--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The mother, kneeling in the empty night,<br>With pleading hands uplifted for the son<br>Who, even as she prayed, had fought the fight--<br>The victory had won:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The wife, with trembling hand that wrote to say<br>The babe was waiting for the sire's caress--<br>The letter meeting that upon the way,--<br>The babe was fatherless:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The maiden, with her lips, in fancy, pressed<br>Against the brow once dewy with her breath,<br>Now lying numb, unknown, and uncaressed<br>Save by the dews of death.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What meed of tribute can the poet pay<br>The Soldier, but to trail the ivy-vine<br>Of idle rhyme above his grave to-day<br>In epitaph design?--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Or wreathe with laurel-words the icy brows<br>That ache no longer with a dream of fame,<br>But, pillowed lowly in the narrow house,<br>Renowned beyond the name.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The dewy tear-drops of the night may fall,<br>And tender morning with her shining hand<br>May brush them from the grasses green and tall<br>That undulate the land.--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet song of Peace nor din of toil and thrift,<br>Nor chanted honors, with the flowers we heap,<br>Can yield us hope the Hero's head to lift<br>Out of its dreamless sleep:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The dear old Flag, whose faintest flutter flies<br>A stirring echo through each patriot breast,<br>Can never coax to life the folded eyes<br>That saw its wrongs redressed--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That watched it waver when the fight was hot,<br>And blazed with newer courage to its aid,<br>Regardless of the shower of shell and shot<br>Through which the charge was made;--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And when, at last, they saw it plume its wings,<br>Like some proud bird in stormy element,<br>And soar untrammeled on its wanderings,<br>They closed in death, content.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O Mother, you who miss the smiling face<br>Of that dear boy who vanished from your sight,<br>And left you weeping o'er the vacant place<br>He used to fill at night,--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who left you dazed, bewildered, on a day<br>That echoed wild huzzas, and roar of guns<br>That drowned the farewell words you tried to say<br>To incoherent ones;--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Be glad and proud you had the life to give--<br>Be comforted through all the years to come,--<br>Your country has a longer life to live,<br>Your son a better home.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O Widow, weeping o'er the orphaned child,<br>Who only lifts his questioning eyes to send<br>A keener pang to grief unreconciled,--<br>Teach him to comprehend</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He had a father brave enough to stand<br>Before the fire of Treason's blazing gun,<br>That, dying, he might will the rich old land<br>Of Freedom to his son.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And, Maiden, living on through lonely years<br>In fealty to love's enduring ties,--<br>With strong faith gleaming through the tender tears<br>That gather in your eyes,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Look up! and own, in gratefulness of prayer,<br>Submission to the will of Heaven's High Host:--<br>I see your Angel-soldier pacing there,<br>Expectant at his post.--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I see the rank and file of armies vast,<br>That muster under one supreme control;<br>I hear the trumpet sound the signal-blast--<br>The calling of the roll--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The grand divisions falling into line<br>And forming, under voice of One alone<br>Who gives command, and joins with tongue divine<br>The hymn that shakes the Throne.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And thus, in tribute to the forms that rest<br>In their last camping-ground, we strew the bloom<br>And fragrance of the flowers they loved the best,<br>In silence o'er the tomb.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With reverent hands we twine the Hero's wreath<br>And clasp it tenderly on stake or stone<br>That stands the sentinel for each beneath<br>Whose glory is our own.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">While in the violet that greets the sun,<br>We see the azure eye of some lost boy;<br>And in the rose the ruddy cheek of one<br>We kissed in childish joy,--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Recalling, haply, when he marched away,<br>He laughed his loudest though his eyes were wet.--<br>The kiss he gave his mother's brow that day<br>Is there and burning yet:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And through the storm of grief around her tossed,<br>One ray of saddest comfort she may see,--<br>Four hundred thousand sons like hers were lost<br>To weeping Liberty.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">. . . . . . . .<br>But draw aside the drapery of gloom,<br>And let the sunshine chase the clouds away<br>And gild with brighter glory every tomb<br>We decorate to-day:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And in the holy silence reigning round,<br>While prayers of perfume bless the atmosphere,<br>Where loyal souls of love and faith are found,<br>Thank God that Peace is here!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And let each angry impulse that may start,<br>Be smothered out of every loyal breast;<br>And, rocked within the cradle of the heart,<br>Let every sorrow rest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=James+Whitcomb+Riley">James Whitcomb Riley</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=416849" data-title="The Silent Victors de James Whitcomb Riley" data-description="MAY 30, 1878, 

Dying for victory, cheer on cheer
Thundered on his eager ear.
--CHARLES L. HOLSTEIN.

I

Deep, tender, firm and true, the Nation's heart
Throbs for her gallant heroes passed away,
Who in grim Battle's drama played their part,
And s..."></div>
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