Page:Poems that every child should know (ed. Burt, 1904).djvu/168

130 The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,

And all we know, or dream, or fear

Of agony, are thine.

But to the hero, when his sword

Has won the battle for the free,

Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word;

And in its hollow tones are heard

The thanks of millions yet to be.

Come, when his task of fame is wrought—

Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought—

Come in her crowning hour—and then

Thy sunken eye's unearthly light

To him is welcome as the sight

Of sky and stars to prisoned men;

Thy grasp is welcome as the hand

Of brother in a foreign land;

Thy summons welcome as the cry

That told the Indian isles were nigh

To the world-seeking Genoese,

When the land wind, from woods of palm,

And orange-groves, and fields of balm,

Blew o'er the Haytian seas.

Bozzaris! with the storied brave

Greece nurtured in her glory's time,

Rest thee—there is no prouder grave,

Even in her own proud clime.

She wore no funeral-weeds for thee,

Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume

Like torn branch from death's leafless tree

In sorrow's pomp and pageantry,

The heartless luxury of the tomb;