Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/781

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HE snow lies thick on Valley Forge,

The ice on the Delaware,

But the poor dead soldiers of King George

They neither know nor care—

Not though the earliest primrose break

On the sunny side of the lane,

And scuffling rookeries awake

Their England's spring again.

They will not stir when the drifts are gone

Or the ice melts out of the bay:

And the men that served with Washington

Lie all as still as they.

They will not stir though the mayflower blows

In the moist dark woods of pine,

And every rock-strewn pasture shows

Mullein and columbine.

Each for his land, in a fair fight,

Encountered, strove, and died,

And the kindly earth that knows no spite

Covers them side by side.

She is too busy to think of war;

She has all the world to make gay;

And, behold, the yearly flowers are,

Where they were in our fathers' day!

Golden-rod by the pasture-wall

When the columbine is dead,

And sumach leaves that turn, in fall,

Bright as the blood they shed.