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Recited at Arlington
IT is needless I should tell you | |
| Of the history of Sumter, | |
| How the chorus of the cannon shook its walls; | |
| How the scattered navies gathered, | |
| How the iron-ranked battalions | 5 |
| Rose responsive to the country’s urgent calls. | |
| |
| It is needless that I tell you, | |
| For the time is still too recent, | |
| How was heard the first vindictive cannon’s peal; | |
| How two brothers stopped debating | 10 |
| On a sad, unsettled question, | |
| And referred it to the arbitrating steel. | |
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| It is needless that I tell you | |
| Of the somber days that followed— | |
| Stormy days that in such slow succession ran; | 15 |
| Of Antietam, Chickamauga, | |
| Gettysburg, and Murfreesboro’, | |
| Or the rocky, cannon-shaken Rapidan. | |
| |
| It was not a war of conquest: | |
| It was fought to save the Union, | 20 |
| It was waged for an idea of the right; | |
| And the graves so widely scattered | |
| Show how fruitful an idea | |
| In peace, or war, may be in moral might. | |
| |
| Brief indeed the war had lasted | 25 |
| Had it raged in hope of plunder; | |
| Briefer still, had glory been its only aim. | |
| But its long and sad duration | |
| And the graves it has bequeathed us, | |
| Other motives, other principles proclaim. | 30 |
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| Need I mention this idea, | |
| The invincible idea, | |
| That seemed to hold and save the Nation’s life; | |
| That, resistless and unblenching, | |
| Undisheartened by disaster, | 35 |
| Seemed the soul and inspiration of the strife? | |
| |
| This idea was of freedom— | |
| Was that men should all stand equal, | |
| That the world was interested in the fight; | |
| That the present and the future | 40 |
| Were electors who had chosen | |
| Us to argue and decide the case aright. | |
| |
| And the theories of freedom | |
| Those now silent bugles uttered | |
| Will reverberate with ever-glowing tones; | 45 |
| They can never be forgotten, | |
| But will work among the nations | |
| Till they sweep the world of shackles and of thrones. | |
| |
| It is meet that we do honor | |
| To the comrades who have fallen— | 50 |
| Meet that we the sadly woven garlands twine. | |
| Where they buried lie is sacred, | |
| Whether ’neath the Northern marble | |
| Or beneath the Southern cypress-tree or pine. | |
| |
| Nations are the same as children— | 55 |
| Always living in the future, | |
| Living in their aspirations and their hopes; | |
| Picturing some future greatness, | |
| Reaching forth for future prizes, | |
| With a wish for higher aims and grander scopes. | 60 |
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| It is better for the people | |
| That they reach for an ideal, | |
| That they give their future nations better lives; | |
| Though the standard be unreal, | |
| Though the hope meets no fulfillment, | 65 |
| Though the fact in empty dreams alone survives. | |
| |
| If the people rest contented | |
| With the good they have accomplished, | |
| Then they retrograde and slowly sink away. | |
| Give a nation an ideal, | 70 |
| Some grand, noble, central project; | |
| It, like adamant, refuses to decay. | |
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| ’Tis the duty of the poet, | |
| ’Tis the duty of the statesman, | |
| To inspire a nation’s life with nobler aims; | 75 |
| And dishonor will o’ershadow | |
| Him who dares not, or who falsely | |
| His immortal-fruited mission misproclaims. | |
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