| |
| HERE rest the great and good—here they repose | |
| After their generous toil. A sacred band, | |
| They take their sleep together, while the year | |
| Comes with its early flowers to deck their graves, | |
| And gathers them again, as winter frowns. | 5 |
| Theirs is no vulgar sepulchre—green sods | |
| Are all their monument, and yet it tells | |
| A nobler history, than pillar’d piles, | |
| Or the eternal pyramids. They need | |
| No statue nor inscription to reveal | 10 |
| Their greatness. It is round them, and the joy | |
| With which their children tread the hallowed ground | |
| That holds their venerated bones, the peace | |
| That smiles on all they fought for, and the wealth | |
| That clothes the land they rescued,—these, though mute, | 15 |
| As feeling ever is when deepest,—these | |
| Are monuments more lasting, than the fanes | |
| Rear’d to the kings and demigods of old. | |
| Touch not the ancient elms, that bend their shade | |
| Over their lowly graves; beneath their boughs | 20 |
| There is a solemn darkness, even at noon, | |
| Suited to such as visit at the shrine | |
| Of serious liberty. No factious voice | |
| Call’d them unto the field of generous fame, | |
| But the pure consecrated love of home. | 25 |
| No deeper feeling sways us, when it wakes | |
| In all its greatness. It has told itself | |
| To the astonish’d gaze of awe-struck kings, | |
| At Marathon, at Bannockburn, and here, | |
| Where first our patriots sent the invader back | 30 |
| Broken and cowed. Let these green elms be all | |
| To tell us where they fought, and where they lie. | |
| Their feelings were all nature, and they need | |
| No art to make them known. They live in us, | |
| While we are like them, simple, hardy, bold, | 35 |
| Worshipping nothing but our own pure hearts, | |
| And the one universal Lord. They need | |
| No column pointing to the heaven they sought, | |
| To tell us of their home. The heart itself, | |
| Left to its own free purpose, hastens there, | 40 |
| And there alone reposes. Let these elms | |
| Bend their protecting shadow o’er their graves, | |
| And build with their green roof the only fane, | |
| Where we may gather on the hallow’d day, | |
| That rose to them in blood, and set in glory. | 45 |
| Here let us meet, and while our motionless lips | |
| Give not a sound, and all around is mute | |
| In the deep sabbath of a heart too full | |
| For words or tears—here let us strew the sod | |
| With the first flowers of spring, and make to them | 50 |
| An offering of the plenty, Nature gives, | |
| And they have render’d ours—perpetually. | |
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