Poured here in vain;—­that sturdy blood
Was meant to make the earth more green,
But in a higher, gentler mood
Than broke this April noon serene;
Two graves are here:  to mark the place,
At head and foot, an unhewn stone,
O’er which the herald lichens trace
The blazon of Oblivion.

These men were brave enough, and true
To the hired soldier’s bull-dog creed;
What brought them here they never knew,
They fought as suits the English breed: 
They came three thousand miles, and died,
To keep the Past upon its throne: 
Unheard, beyond the ocean tide,
Their English mother made her moan.

The turf that covers them no thrill
Sends up to fire the heart and brain;
No stronger purpose nerves the will,
No hope renews its youth again: 
From farm to farm the Concord glides,
And trails my fancy with its flow;
O’erhead the balanced hen-hawk slides,
Twinned in the river’s heaven below.

But go, whose Bay State bosom stirs,
Proud of thy birth and neighbor’s right,
Where sleep the heroic villagers
Borne red and stiff from Concord fight;
Thought Reuben, snatching down his gun,
Or Seth, as ebbed the life away,
What earthquake rifts would shoot and run
World-wide from that short April fray?

What then?  With heart and hand they wrought,
According to their village light;
’Twas for the Future that they fought,
Their rustic faith in what was right. 
Upon earth’s tragic stage they burst
Unsummoned, in the humble sock;
Theirs the fifth act; the curtain first
Rose long ago on Charles’s block.

Their graves have voices; if they threw
Dice charged with fates beyond their ken,
Yet to their instincts they were true,
And had the genius to be men. 
Fine privilege of Freedom’s host,
Of humblest soldiers for the Right!—­
Age after age ye hold your post,
Your graves send courage forth, and might.

TO——­

We, too, have autumns, when our leaves
  Drop loosely through the dampened air,
When all our good seems bound in sheaves,
  And we stand reaped and bare.

Our seasons have no fixed returns,
  Without our will they come and go;
At noon our sudden summer burns,
  Ere sunset all is snow.

But each day brings less summer cheer,
  Crimps more our ineffectual spring,
And something earlier every year
  Our singing birds take wing.

As less the olden glow abides,
  And less the chillier heart aspires,
With drift-wood beached in past spring-tides
  We light our sullen fires.

By the pinched rushlight’s starving beam
  We cower and strain our wasted sight,
To stitch youth’s shroud up, seam by seam,
  In the long arctic night.

It was not so—­we once were young
  When Spring, to womanly Summer turning,
Her dew-drops on each grass-blade strung,
  In the red sunrise burning.