Hushed and quiet and still they lie,
This silent, dreamless army,
While living comrades spring to their side,
And the bugle-call and the battle-cry
Are heard as dreamer and dreamless lie
Under the stars of the arching sky,
The men who have heard from the men who have died
The call of the silent army.
THE SOURCE OF NEWS
From The Needle
ABSOLUTE knowledge I have none,
But my aunt’s washerwoman’s son
Heard a policeman on his beat
Say to a laborer in the street
That he had a letter just last week,
Written in the finest Greek,
From a Chinese coolie in Timbuctoo,
Who said the niggers in Cuba knew
Of a colored man in a Texas town
Who got it straight from a circus clown,
That a man in Klondike heard the news
From a gang of South American Jews,
About somebody in Bamboo
Who heard a man who claimed he knew
Of a swell society female rake
Whose mother-in-law will undertake
To prove that her husband’s sister’s niece
Has stated in a printed piece
That she has a son who has a friend
Who knows when the war is going to end.
TO MY SON
A poem, anonymous, sent to the Chicago Evening Post by one whose son’s regiment was leaving for France.
MY son, at last the fateful day has come
For us to part. The hours have nearly run.
May God return you safe to land and home;
Yet, what God wills, so may His will be done.
Draw tight the belt about your slender frame;
Flash blue your eyes! Hold high your proud young head!
Today you march in Liberty’s fair name,
To save the line enriched by France’s dead!
I would not it were otherwise. And yet
’Tis hard to speed your marching forth, my son!
’Tis doubly hard to live without regret
For love unsaid, and kindnesses undone.
But would the chance were mine with you to stand
Upon those shores and see our flag unfurled!
To fight on France’s brave, unconquered land
With Liberty’s great sword for all the world!
Beyond the waves, my son, the siren calls,
The sky is black and Fastnet lies abreast;
A signal rocket flings its stars and falls
Across the night to welcome England’s guest.