| |
| FOR what would a man die? | |
| For what would a man be dead, | |
| In April?—go down and lie | |
| In a low bed, | |
| And when spring was passing by | 5 |
| Pull the covers over his head? | |
| |
| Did he know his house would be dark, | |
| The window curtains drawn, | |
| When the morning star was a spark | |
| On the ashes of the dawn?— | 10 |
| Chilly and very low, | |
| With no door swinging back and forth | |
| Where he may pass and go | |
| Over the shining swarth, | |
| With the winds singing to and fro | 15 |
| And the redbirds winging north? | |
| Would he lie like a straight ash stick | |
| When the roots around him stir | |
| And the other dead are quick— | |
| The daisy and ragweed and burr?— | 20 |
| Lie still, though he hear in his night | |
| The wind blowing on to June; | |
| The silence of ripe sunlight | |
| Over the grass at noon; | |
| The stars like bees overhead | 25 |
| In the apple trees and the plums? | |
| For what would a man be dead | |
| Now April comes? | |
| |
| Do men love Fatherland | |
| So, that they die for these: | 30 |
| Night in blue valleys, and | |
| The breakers of blue seas; | |
| Clouds marching, caravanned, | |
| And star-acquainted trees; | |
| Cities time’s made grey | 35 |
| And talkative and wise; | |
| Hills so old they may | |
| Watch pain with patient eyes; | |
| Young mountain-tops that play | |
| At touching the skies; | 40 |
| The heavens, like a bent hand; | |
| The brown earth underneath? | |
| Are these his Fatherland, | |
| For which man stops his breath, | |
| Takes off his body, and | 45 |
| Goes down to sit with Death? | |
| |
| Or is it this that rouses | |
| His heart to go: | |
| Do streets of little houses | |
| Keep haunting him so | 50 |
| With their secrets, like small caged birds | |
| That flutter and fly at the sill, | |
| And their ghosts of long-dead words | |
| That are walking still; | |
| With their cool white beds for sleep, | 55 |
| And their tables spread, | |
| And their tented roofs that keep | |
| Out the curious moon overhead? | |
| |
| For these what man would end | |
| His own fire and lamp-light, | 60 |
| His thought that is his friend | |
| And sits by his hearth at night; | |
| His old, acquainted clothes | |
| And the sweet taste of bread— | |
| All of the things he knows— | 65 |
| Go down in the earth and be dead? | |
| No, this is Fatherland, | |
| For which men, lifting up | |
| Life, toss it on the sand | |
| Like water from a cup: | 70 |
| A little land that has | |
| Truth round it like a sea, | |
| Where dreams are many as | |
| The leaves are on a tree, | |
| And stars grow in the grass | 75 |
| For men to touch and see. | |
| A little, holy land | |
| Within all hearts of men | |
| The earth holds in her hand— | |
| There he is citizen | 80 |
| With high, heroic things, | |
| With faiths and loyalties, | |
| With deeds that put on wings, | |
| And songs that sing of these; | |
| With sacrifice, though it be | 85 |
| For a mistaken dream; | |
| Justice and mercy | |
| Alive with a little gleam | |
| In the earth of men who say | |
| They have rooted it from the sod | 90 |
| And taken another way | |
| And got them another God. | |
| |
| From mountains of the moon | |
| April has come once more; | |
| But April, nor May, nor June, | 95 |
| Will ever find his door. | |
| He lies so quiet now | |
| In puzzlement how death | |
| Can be so kind, and how | |
| Lightly he draws his breath. | 100 |
| Almost afraid to stir | |
| Lest he find his dreaming vain, | |
| He drinks of wonder there | |
| As green leaves drink the rain. | |
| I think he was not sad | 105 |
| To feel his weight of clay, | |
| Nor sorry that he had | |
| Lost April’s way. | |
| He had such glory in | |
| His closing eyes | 110 |
| He needs no stars to spin | |
| And bubble in clear skies, | |
| No young south wind that leaps | |
| Singing, no April flowers; | |
| Within his house he keeps | 115 |
| A greater spring than ours. | |
| |
