God's scales of Justice hang between
The deed Unjust and the end Unseen,
And the sparrow's fall in the one is weighed
By the Lord's own Hand in the other laid.
In the prairie path to our Sun-set gate,
In the flow'ring heart of a new-born State,
Are the hopes of an old man's waning years,
'Neath headstones worn by an old man's tears.
When the bright sun sinks in the rose-lipped West,
His last red ray is the headstone's crest;
And the mounds he laves in a crimson flood
Are a Soldier's wealth baptized in blood!
Do ye ask who reared those headstones there,
And crowned with thorns a sire's gray hair?
And by whom the Land's great debt was paid
To the Soldier old, in the graves they made?
Shrink, Pity! shrink, at the question dire;
And, Honor, burn in a blush of fire!
Turn, Angel, turn from the page thine eyes,
Or the Sin, once written, never dies!
They were men of the Land he had fought to save
From a foreign foe that had crossed the wave,
When his sun-lit youth was a martial song,
And shook a throne as it swelled along.
They were sons of the clime whose soft, warm breath
Is the soul of earth, and a life in death;
Where the Summer dreams on the couch of Spring,
And the songs of birds through the whole year ring;
Where the falling leaf is the cup that grew
To catch the gems of the new leaf's dew,
And the winds that through the vine-leaves creep
Are the sighs of Time in a pleasant sleep.