WRITTEN FOR A REUNION OF VETERANS IN THE YEAR 1915.
Comrades, once more to-night we gather here,
A dwindling band of graybeards; autumn sere
Pales into winter, Indian summer’s glow
Fades from the hills, reluctant still to go;
And Earth itself fades from our sight away,
Like rosy clouds that flit at close of day;
In our hearts too the flame burns low at last,—
An arctic winter closes round us fast.
While the remaining grains, how few, alas!
Of golden sand, pour through the hour-glass,
Fill up, dear friends, your goblets once again,
And warm the pulses in each shrunken vein
With sunshine garnered on some Gallic plain,
Or stolen from the vine-clad hills of Spain.
Here’s to the living absent, comrades they
So gay in camp, so dauntless in the fray,
The lingering remnant of the mighty host
That swept from far Atlanta to the coast.
Since then their prows through every sea have foamed,
And o’er five continents their feet have roamed,
And plucked the brightest bays in fields afar,
Who glittered brightest in the van of war.
But fast and faster from our sight they fail,
A few belated stragglers feebly hail
Along the banks of Styx the boatman pale.
Where’er they are, once more we pledge them all,
Ere from the thinning ranks we too shall fall.
Lift high the cup, a generous current pour,
Libations to the chosen friends of yore,
Who wander on the dim Plutonian shore.
A mist arises from the wine-stained ground,
And lo, what phantom faces gather round!
Like storm-blown wreaths they flit—e’en so must we
Soon pass like vapors blown across the sea.
Now draw together, fling apart the doors
Of wit and fancy, open up the stores
Of feeling that have been repressed so long;
Waken the voice of melody and song,
These fleeting moments sweetly to prolong,
And kindling up once more the altar fire,
Let the last embers all in flame expire.