]
* * * * *
=_Henry Timrod,[92] 1829-1867._=
From his "Poems."
=_416._= THE UNKNOWN DEAD.
The rain is plashing on my sill,
But all the winds of Heaven are still;
And so it falls with that dull sound
Which thrills us in the church-yard ground,
When the first spadeful drops like lead
Upon the coffin of the dead.
Beyond my streaming window-pane,
I cannot see the neighboring vane,
Yet from its old familiar tower
The bell comes, muffled, through the shower
What strange and unsuspected link
Of feeling touched, has made me think--
While with a vacant soul and eye
I watch that gray and stony sky--
Of nameless graves on battle-plains
Washed by a single winter's rains,
Where--some beneath Virginian hills,
And some by green Atlantic rills,
Some by the waters of the West--
A myriad unknown heroes rest?
Ah! not the chiefs, who, dying, see
Their flags in front of victory,
Or, at their life-blood's noble cost
Pay for a battle nobly lost,
Claim from their monumental beds
The bitterest tears a nation sheds.
Beneath yon lonely mound--the spot
By all save some fond few, forgot--
Lie the true martyrs of the fight
Which strikes for freedom and for right.
Pages:
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714