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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=418972" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Song For Soldiers</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">WHAT song is best for the soldiers? <br>Take no heed of the words, nor choose yon the style of the story;<br>Let it burst out from the heart like a spring from the womb of a mountain,<br>Natural, clear, resistless, leaping its way to the levels;<br>Whether of love or hate or war or the pathos and pain of affliction;<br>Whether of manly pluck in the perilous hour, or that which is higher,<br>And highest of all, the slowly bleeding sacrifice,<br>The giving of life and its joys for the sake of men and freedom;—<br>Any song for the soldier that will harmonize with the life-throbs;<br>For he has laved in the mystical sea by which men are one;<br>His pulse has thrilled into blinding tune with the vaster anthems<br>Which God plays on the battle-fields when he sweeps the strings of nations,<br>And the song of the earth-planet bursts on the silent spheres.<br>Shot through like the cloud of Etna with flames of heroic devotion, <br>And shaded with quivering lines from the mourning of women and children!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here is a song for the soldiers—a song of the Cheyenne Indians, <br>Of men with soldierly hearts who walked with Death as a comrade. <br>Hush! Let the present fade; let the distance die; let the last year stand: <br>We are far to the West, in Montana, on the desolate plains of Montana; <br>We ride with the cavalry troopers on the bloody trail of the Cheyennes,<br>Forty braves of the tribe who have leaped from the reservation<br>Down on the mining camps in their desecrated valleys, <br>Down to their fathers' graves and the hunting-ground of their people.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Chilled with the doom of Death they gaze on the white men's changes: <br>Ruthless the brutal force that has crushed their homes and their manhood, <br>And ruthless the hearts of the Cheyenne braves as they swoop on the camps of the miners! <br>Back to the hills they dash, with reeking trophies around them:<br>But swift on their trail the cavalry ride, and their trumpets <br>Break on the ears of the braves with a threat of oncoming vengeance.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">At last they are bayed and barred—corraled in a straightwalled valley,—<br>The Indians back to the cliffs with the shattered rocks as a breastwork,<br>The soldiers in lined stockades across the mouth of the valley.<br>Hungrily hiss the bullets, not wasted in random firing, <br>But every shot for a mark,—thrice their number of soldiers <br>Raking the Cheyenne rocks with a pitiless rain of missiles, <br>One to three in the firing, but every Cheyenne bullet <br>Tumbled a reckless trooper behind his fence in the stockade.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'God! they are brave!' cried the captain. 'Seven hours we've held them, <br>Three, ay, five to one, if you count their dead and their wounded: <br>Damn them! why don't they yield for the sake of their lives and their wounded?'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But never a sign but flame and the hiss of the leaden defiance<br>Comes from the Cheyenne braves, though their firing slackens in vigor<br>To grow in fatal precision—grim as the cliff above them<br>They fight their fight, and the valley is lined with death from their rifles.<br>Cried the captain, ''Men, we must charge!' and he grieves for his boys and their foemen;<br>'But show them a sign of quarter;' and he swings them a flag to tell them<br>That his side is willing to parley: the Indians riddle the ensign,<br>And the captain groans in his heart as he gives the order for charging.<br>Terrible getting ready of men who prepare for a death-fight:—<br>Scabbards are thrown aside and belts unstrapped for the striking,<br>Ominous outward signs of the deadlier inner preparing<br>When the soul flings danger aside and the human heart its mercy.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Out from the fatal earthworks, their eyes like fire in a <br>With naked blades the troopers, and nerves wire-strung for the onset, <br>When suddenly, up from the rocks, a sign at last from the Cheyennes!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Two tall braves on the rocks—'Re-form!' brays the cavalry trumpet, <br>And grimly the soldiers return, reluctantly leaving the conflict. <br>Still on the rocks two forms of bronze, as if prepared for the stormers, <br>Then down to the field, and behold, they dash toward the wondering troopers! <br>The soldiers stare at the charge, but no man laughs at the foemen,<br>Instead of a sneer a tremor at many a mouth in sorrow. <br>On they come to their death, and, standing at fifty paces, <br>They fire in the face of the squadron, and dash with their knives to the death-grip! <br>Fifty rifles give flame, and the breasts of the heroes are shattered; <br>But falling, they plunge toward the fight, and their knives sink deep in the meadow!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'On to the rocks!' and the soldiers have done with their feelings of mercy— <br>But never a foe to meet them nor a shot from the deadly barrier. <br>First on the rocks the captain, with a cheer that died as he gave it,—<br>A cheer that was half a groan and a cry of admiration. <br>Awed stood the troopers who followed, and lowered their swords with their leader, <br>Homage of brave to the brave, saluting with souls and weapons; <br>There at their feet lay the foemen—every man dead on his rifle— <br>The two who had charged the troops were the last alive of the Cheyennes!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Boyle+O%27Reilly">John Boyle O'Reilly</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=418972" data-title="A Song For Soldiers de John Boyle O'Reilly" data-description="WHAT song is best for the soldiers? 
Take no heed of the words, nor choose yon the style of the story;
Let it burst out from the heart like a spring from the womb of a mountain,
Natural, clear, resistless, leaping its way to the levels;
Whether of..."></div>
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