They are not dead—they are not dead, I say,
These men whose mortal forms are in the sod.
A grand Advance-Guard marching on its way,
Their Souls move upwards to salute their God!
While to their comrades who are in the strife
They cry, ‘Fight on! Death is the dawn of life.’
We had forgotten all the depth and beauty
And lofty purport of that old true word
Deplaced by pleasure—that old good word duty.
Now by its meaning is the whole world stirred.
These men died for it; for it, now, we give,
And sacrifice, and serve, and toil, and live.
From out our hearts had gone a high devotion
For anything. It took a mighty wrath—
Against great evil to wake strong emotion,
And put us back upon the righteous path.
It took a mingled stream of tears and blood
To cut the channel through to Brotherhood.
That word meant nothing on our lips in peace:
We had despoiled it by our castes and classes.
But when this savage carnage finds surcease
A new ideal will unite the masses.
And there shall be True Brotherhood with men—
The Christly Spirit stirring earth again.
For this our men have suffered, fought, and died.
And we who can but dimly see the end
Are guarded by their spirits glorified,
Who help us on our way, while they ascend.
They are not dead—they are not dead, I say,
These men whose graves we decorate to-day.
America and France walk hand in hand;
As one, their hearts beat through the coming years:
One is the aim and purpose of each land,
Baptized with holy water of their tears.
To-day they worship with one faith, and know
Grief’s first Communion in God’s House of Woe.
Great Liberty, the Goddess at our gates,
And great Jeanne d’Arc, are fused into one soul:
A host of Angels on that soul awaits
To lead it up to triumph at the goal.
Along the path of Victory they tread,
Moves the majestic cortège of our dead.
Flowers of France in the Spring,
Your growth is a beautiful thing;
But give us your fragrance and bloom—
Yea, give us your lives in truth,
Give us your sweetness and grace
To brighten the resting-place
Of the flower of manhood and youth,
Gone into the dust of the tomb.
OUR ATLAS
Not Atlas, with his shoulders bent beneath the weighty world,
Bore such a burden as this man, on whom the Gods have hurled
The evils of old festering lands—yea, hurled them in their might
And left him standing all alone, to set the wrong things right.
It is the way the Fates have done since first Time’s race began!
They open up Pandora’s box before some chosen man;
And then, aloof, they wait and watch, to see if he will find
And wake the slumbering God that dwells in every mortal’s mind.