Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/220



I

, it is fitting on this holiday,

Commemorative of our soldier dead,

When—with sweet flowers of our New England May

Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray—

Their graves in every town are garlanded,

That pious tribute should be given too

To our intrepid few

Obscurely fallen here beyond the seas.

Those to preserve their country's greatness died;

But by the death of these

Something that we can look upon with pride

Has been achieved, nor wholly unreplied

Can sneerers triumph in the charge they make

That from a war where Freedom was at stake

America withheld and, daunted, stood aside.

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