Those wise old elms could hear no cry
Of all that distant agony—
Only the red-winged blackbird, and the rustle of thick ripe corn.
The blue jay, perched upon that bronze, with bright unweeting eyes,
Could never read the names that signed
The noblest charter of mankind;
But all of them were names we knew beneath our English skies.
And on the low gray headstones, with their crumbling weather-stains,
—Though cardinal birds, like drops of blood,
Flickered across the haunted wood,—