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ROBERT GOULD SHAW
THE WARS we wage | |
| Are noble, and our battles still are won | |
| By justice for us, ere we lift the gage. | |
| We have not sold our loftiest heritage. | |
| The proud republic hath not stooped to cheat | 5 |
| And scramble in the market place of war; | |
| Her forehead weareth yet its solemn star. | |
| Here is her witness: this, her perfect son, | |
| This delicate and proud New England soul | |
| Who leads despisëd men, with just-un-shackled feet, | 10 |
| Up the large ways where death and glory meet, | |
| To show all peoples that our shame is done, | |
| That once more we are clean and spirit-whole. | |
| |
| Crouched in the sea fog on the moaning sand | |
| All night he lay, speaking some simple word | 15 |
| From hour to hour to the slow minds that heard, | |
| Holding each poor life gently in his hand | |
| And breathing on the base rejected clay | |
| Till each dark face shone mystical and grand | |
| Against the breaking day; | 20 |
| And lo, the shard the potter cast away | |
| Was grown a fiery chalice crystal-fine, | |
| Fulfilled of the divine | |
| Great wine of battle wrath by God’s ring finger stirred. | |
| Then upward, where the shadowy bastion loomed | 25 |
| Huge on the mountain in the wet sea light, | |
| Whence now, and now, infernal flowerage bloomed, | |
| Bloomed, burst, and scattered down its deadly seed,— | |
| They swept, and died like freemen on the height, | |
| Like freemen, and like men of noble breed; | 30 |
| And when the battle fell away at night | |
| By hasty and contemptuous hands were thrust | |
| Obscurely in a common grave with him | |
| The fair-haired keeper of their love and trust. | |
| Now limb doth mingle with dissoveëd limb | 35 |
| In nature’s busy old democracy | |
| To flush the mountain laurel when she blows | |
| Sweet by the southern sea, | |
| And heart with crumbled heart climbs in the rose:— | |
| The untaught hearts with the high heart that knew | 40 |
| This mountain fortress for no earthly hold | |
| Of temporal quarrel, but the bastion old | |
| Of spiritual wrong, | |
| Built by an unjust nation sheer and strong, | |
| Expugnable but by a nation’s rue | 45 |
| And bowing down before that equal shrine | |
| By all men held divine, | |
| Whereof his band and he were the most holy sign. | |
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“NO HINT OF STAIN”
WE are our fathers’ sons: let those who lead us know! | |
| ’T was only yesterday sick Cuba’s cry | 50 |
| Came up the tropic wind, “Now help us, for we die!” | |
| Then Alabama heard, | |
| And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho | |
| Shouted a burning word; | |
| Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred, | 55 |
| And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth, | |
| East, west, and south, and north, | |
| Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young | |
| Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan, | |
| By the unforgotten names of eager boys | 60 |
| Who might have tasted girls’ love and been stung | |
| With the old mystic joys | |
| And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on, | |
| But that the heart of youth is generous,— | |
| We charge you, ye who lead us, | 65 |
| Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain! | |
| Turn not their new-world victories to gain! | |
| One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays | |
| Of their dear praise, | |
| One jot of their pure conquest put to hire, | 70 |
| The implacable republic will require; | |
| With clamor, in the glare and gaze of noon, | |
| Or subtly, coming as a thief at night, | |
| But surely, very surely, slow or soon | |
| That insult deep we deeply will requite. | 75 |
| Tempt not our weakness, our cupidity! | |
| For save we let the island men go free, | |
| Those baffled and dislaureled ghosts | |
| Will curse us from the lamentable coasts | |
| Where walk the frustrate dead. | 80 |
| The cup of trembling shall be drainëd quite, | |
| Eaten the sour bread of astonishment, | |
| With ashes of the hearth shall be made white | |
| Our hair, and wailing shall be in the tent: | |
| Then on your guiltier head | 85 |
| Shall our intolerable self-disdain | |
| Wreak suddenly its anger and its pain; | |
| For manifest in that disastrous light | |
| We shall discern the right | |
| And do it, tardily.—O ye who lead, | 90 |
| Take heed! | |
| Blindness we may forgive, but baseness we will smite. | |
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