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(Excerpt)
OH! if there is in beautiful and fair | |
| A potency to charm, a power to bless; | |
| If bright blue skies and music-breathing air, | |
| And Nature in her every varied dress | |
| Of peaceful beauty and wild loveliness, | 5 |
| Can shed across the heart one sunshine ray, | |
| Then others, too, sweet stream, with only less | |
| Than mine own joy, shall gaze, and bear away | |
| Some cherished thought of thee for many a coming day. | |
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| But yet not utterly obscure thy banks, | 10 |
| Nor all unknown to history’s page thy name; | |
| For there wild war hath poured his battle ranks, | |
| And stamped, in characters of blood and flame, | |
| Thine annals in the chronicles of fame. | |
| The wave that ripples on, so calm and still, | 15 |
| Hath trembled at the war-cry’s loud acclaim, | |
| The cannon’s voice hath rolled from hill to hill, | |
| And midst thy echoing vales the trump hath sounded shrill. | |
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| My country’s standard waved on yonder height, | |
| Her red cross banner England there displayed, | 20 |
| And there the German, who, for foreign fight, | |
| Had left his own domestic hearth, and made | |
| War, with its horrors and its blood, a trade, | |
| Amidst the battle stood; and all the day, | |
| The bursting bomb, the furious cannonade, | 25 |
| The bugle’s martial notes, the musket’s play, | |
| In mingled uproar wild, resounded far away. | |
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| Thick clouds of smoke obscured the clear bright sky, | |
| And hung above them like a funeral pall, | |
| Shrouding both friend and foe, so soon to lie | 30 |
| Like brethren slumbering in one father’s hall: | |
| The work of death went on, and when the fall | |
| Of night came onward silently, and shed | |
| A dreary hush, where late was uproar all, | |
| How many a brother’s heart in anguish bled | 35 |
| O’er cherished ones, who there lay resting with the dead. | |
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| Unshrouded and uncoffined they were laid | |
| Within the soldier’s grave—e’en where they fell: | |
| At noon they proudly trod the field,—the spade | |
| At night dug out their resting-place; and well | 40 |
| And calmly did they slumber, though no bell | |
| Pealed over them its solemn music slow: | |
| The night winds sung their only dirge,—their knell | |
| Was but the owlet’s boding cry of woe, | |
| The flap of night-hawk’s wing, and murmuring waters’ flow. | 45 |
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| But it is over now,—the plough hath rased | |
| All trace of where War’s wasting hand hath been: | |
| No vestige of the battle may be traced, | |
| Save where the share, in passing o’er the scene, | |
| Turns up some rusted ball; the maize is green | 50 |
| On what was once the death-bed of the brave; | |
| The waters have resumed their wonted sheen, | |
| The wild bird sings in cadence with the wave, | |
| And naught remains to show the sleeping soldier’s grave. | |
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| A pebble-stone that on the war-field lay, | 55 |
| And a wild rose that blossomed brightly there, | |
| Were all the relics that I bore away, | |
| To tell that I had trod the scene of war, | |
| When I had turned my footsteps homeward far. | |
| These may seem childish things to some; to me | 60 |
| They shall be treasured ones,—and, like the star | |
| That guides the sailor o’er the pathless sea, | |
| They shall lead back my thoughts, loved Brandywine, to thee! | |
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