Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/226

198 Sad-hearted, loving, and beloved, and wise,

Who ruled with sinewy hands and dreaming eyes.

What soul that lived then who remembers not

The hour, the landscape, ah! the very spot,—

Hateful for aye,—where news that he was slain

Struck like a hammer on the dazèd brain!

So long ago it was, so long ago,

All, all have past; the terror and the splendor

Have turned like yester-evening's stormy glow

Into a sunset memory strange and tender.

How beautiful it seems, what lordly sights,

What deeds sublime, what wondrous days and nights,

What love of comrades, ay, what quickened breath,

When first we knew that, startled, quailing, still

We too, even we, along the blazing hill,

We, with the best, could face and conquer death!

Glorious all these, but these all less than naught

To the one passion of those days divine,

Love of the land our own hearts' blood had bought—

Our country, our own country, yours and mine,

Then known, then sternly loved, first in our lives.

Ah! loved we not our children, sisters, wives?

But our own country, this was more than they,—

Our wives, our children, this,—our hope, our love

For all most dear, but more—the dawning day

Of freedom for the world, the hope above

All hope for the sad race of man. For where,

In what more lovely world, 'neath skies more fair,

If freedom here should fail, could it find soil and air?

In this one thought, one passion,—whate'er fate

Still may befall,—one moment we were great!

One moment in life's brief, perplexèd hour