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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=523118" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Hero's Grave</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">O'er our evening fire the smoke is like a pall,<br>And funeral banners hang about the arches of the hall,<br>In the gable end I see a catafalque aloof,<br>And night is drawn up like a curtain to the girders of the roof.<br>Thou knowest why we silent sit, and why our eyes are dim,<br>Sing us such proud sorrow as we may hear for him.<br>Reach me the old harp that hangs between the flags he won,<br>I will sing what once I heard beside the grave of such a son.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>My son, my son,<br>A father's eyes are looking on thy grave,<br>Dry eyes that look on this green mound and see<br>The low weed blossom and the long grass wave,<br>Without a single tear to them or thee,<br>My son, my son.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Why should I weep? The grass is grass, the weeds<br>Are weeds. The emmet hath done thus ere now.<br>I tear a leaf; the green blood that it bleeds<br>Is cold. What have I here? Where, where, art thou,<br>My son, my son?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>On which tall trembler shall the old man lean?<br>Which chill leaf shall lap o'er him when he lies<br>On that bed where in visions I have seen<br>Thy filial love? or, when thy father dies,<br>Tissue a fingered thorn to close his childless eyes?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Aye, where art thou? Men tell me of a fame<br>Walking the wondering nations; and they say,<br>When thro' the shouting people thy great name<br>Goes like a chief upon a battle-day,<br>They shake the heavens with glory. Well-away!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>As some poor hound that thro' thronged street and square<br>Pursues his loved lost lord, and fond and fast<br>Seeks what he feels to be but feels not where,<br>Tracks the dear feet to some closed door at last,<br>And lies him down and lornest looks doth cast,</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>So I, thro' all the long tumultuous days,<br>Tracing thy footstep on the human sands,<br>O'er the signed deserts and the vocal ways<br>Pursue thee, faithful, thro' the echoing lands,<br>Wearing a wandering staff with trembling hands:</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Thro' echoing lands that ring with victory,<br>And answer for the living with the dead,<br>And give me marble when I ask for bread,<br>And give me glory when I ask for thee-<br>It was not glory I nursed on my knee.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And now, one stride behind thee, and too late,<br>Yet true to all that reason cannot kill,<br>I stand before the inexorable gate<br>And see thy latest footstep on the sill,<br>And know thou canst not come, but watch and wait thee still.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>'Old man!'-Ah, darest thou? yet thy look is kind,<br>Didst thou, too, love him? 'Thou grey-headed sire,<br>Seest thou this path which from that grave doth wind<br>Far thro' those western uplands higher and higher,<br>Till, like a thread, it burns in the great fire</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>'Of sunset? The wild sea and desert meet<br>Eastward by yon unnavigable strand,<br>Then wherefore hath the flow of human feet<br>Left this dry runnel of memorial sand<br>Meandering thro' the summer of the land?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>'See where the long immeasurable snake,<br>Between dim hall and hamlet, tower and shed,<br>Mountain and mountain, precipice and lake,<br>Lies forth unfinished to this final head,<br>This green dead mound of the unfading dead!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Do they then come to weep thee? Do they kiss<br>Thy relics? Art thou then as wholly gone<br>As some old buried saint? My son, my son,<br>Ah, could I mourn thee so! Such tears were bliss!<br>'Old man, they do not mourn who weep at graves like this.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>They do not mourn? What! hath the insolent foe<br>Found out my child's last bed? Who, who, are they<br>That come and go about him? I cry, 'Who?'<br>I am his father-I;-I cry 'Who?' 'Aye,<br>Gray trembler, I will tell thee who are they.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>'The slave who, having grown up strong and stark<br>To the set season, feels at length he wears<br>Bonds that will break, and thro' the slavish dark<br>Shines with the light of liberated years,<br>And still in chains doth weep a freeman's tears.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>'The patriot, while the unebbed force that hurled<br>His tyrant throbs within his bursting veins,<br>And, on the ruins of a hundred reigns,<br>That ancient heaven of brass, so long unfurled,<br>Falls with a crash of fame that fills the world,<br>And thro' the clangor lo the unwonted strains<br>Of peace, and, in the new sweet heavens upcurled,<br>The sudden incense of a thousand plains.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>'Youth whom some mighty flash from heaven hath turned<br>In his dark highway, and who runs forth, shod<br>With flame, into the wilderness untrod,<br>And as he runs his heart of flint is burned,<br>And in that glass he sees the face of God,<br>And falls upon his knees-and morn is all abroad.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>'Age who hath heard amid his cloistered ground<br>The cheer of youth, and steps from echoing aisles,<br>And at a sight the great blood with a bound<br>Melts his brow's winter, which the free sun smiles<br>To jewels, and he stands a young man crowned<br>With glittering years among a young world shouting round.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>'Girls that do blush and tremble with delight<br>On the St. John's eve of their maidenhood;<br>When the unsummered woman in her blood<br>Glows through the Parian maid, and at the sight<br>The flushing virgin weeps and feels herself too bright.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>'He who first feels the world-old destiny,<br>The shaft of gold that strikes the poet still,<br>And slowly in its victim melts away,<br>Who knows his wounds will heal but when they kill,<br>And drop by vital drop doth bleed his golden ill.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>'All whom the everpassing mysteries<br>Have rapt above the region of our race,<br>And, blinded by the glory and the grace,<br>Break from the ecstatic sphere-as he who dies<br>In darkness, and in heaven's own light doth rise,<br>Dazed with the untried glory of the place<br>Looks up and sees some well-remembered face,<br>And thro' the invulnerable angels flies<br>To that dear human breast and hides his dazzled eyes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>'All who, like the sun-ripened seed that springs<br>And bourgeons in the sun, do hold profound<br>An antenatal stature, which the round<br>Of the dull continent flesh hath cribbed and wound<br>Into this kernelled man; but having found<br>Such soil as grew them, burst in blossomings<br>Not native here, or, from the hallowed ground,<br>Tower their slow height, and spread, like sheltering wings,<br>Those boughs wherein the bird of omen sings<br>High as the palms of heaven, while to the sound<br>Lo kingdoms jocund in the sacred bound<br>Till the world's summer fills her moon, and brings<br>The final fruit which is the feast and fate of kings.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>'And darest thou mourn? Thy bones are left behind,<br>But where art thou, Anchises? Dost thou see<br>Him who once bare the slow paternity,<br>Foot-burnt o'er stony Troy? So, thou, reclined<br>Goest thro' the falling years. Here, here where we<br>Two stand, lies deep the flesh thou hast so pined<br>To clasp, and shalt clasp never. Verily,<br>Love and the worm are often of one mind!<br>God save them from election! Pity thee?<br>True he lifts not thy load, but he hath signed<br>And at his beck a nation rose up free;<br>Thy wounds his living love may never bind,<br>But at the dead man's touch posterity<br>Is healed. To thee, thou poor, and halt, and blind,<br>He is a staff no more: but times to be<br>Lean on his monumental memory<br>As the moon on a mountain. Thou shalt find<br>A silent home, a cheerless hearth: but he<br>Shall be a fire which the enkindling wind,<br>Blowing for ever from eternity,<br>Fans till its universal blaze hath shined<br>The yule of thankful ages. Pity thee?<br>A son is lost to thine infirmity;<br>Poor fool, what then? A son thou hast resigned<br>To give a father to the virtues of mankind.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Sydney+Thompson+Dobell">Sydney Thompson Dobell</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=523118" data-title="A Hero's Grave de Sydney Thompson Dobell" data-description="O'er our evening fire the smoke is like a pall,
And funeral banners hang about the arches of the hall,
In the gable end I see a catafalque aloof,
And night is drawn up like a curtain to the girders of the roof.
Thou knowest why we silent sit, and ..."></div>
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