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St. Paul’s Churchyard
PICARDY, Provençe, Touraine— | |
| Never the fair home land again, | |
| For the Sieur de Rochefontaine! | |
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| Never to lie among his own | |
| With the soft south breezes o’er him blown | 5 |
| Where his stately noble name is known! | |
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| But ever and evermore to rest, | |
| With the alien marble above his breast, | |
| In the clime of his youthful soldier quest. | |
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| In the tyrannous time of war and woe, | 10 |
| The ancient foe of his folk our foe, | |
| Hither he came with Rochambeau. | |
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| Lace and ruffle and epaulet, | |
| Grace and a courtier bearing, yet | |
| A soul as valiant as Lafayette. | 15 |
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| A valiant soul that burned to be | |
| In the fore of the fight for liberty | |
| With the dauntless men who would fain be free. | |
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| Just another who caught the gleam | |
| Of the sun of Freedom’s rising beam, | 20 |
| Who saw the vision, who dreamed the dream. | |
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| Daily Broadway’s clamours and calls | |
| Sweep by the chapel of old St. Paul’s, | |
| Its levelled graves and its ivied walls. | |
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| Here he sleeps; may his slumbers be | 25 |
| Sweet with the great felicity | |
| That waits, ’tis said, beyond Death’s dark sea. | |
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| Never the fair home land!—and still | |
| What matters it for a noble will | |
| That smites for right, ’gainst a giant ill? | 30 |
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| Ours the freedom he helped to gain; | |
| So a plot of our free domaine | |
| For the Sieur de Rochefontaine. | |
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