Fodder For Cannon

Bodies glad, erect,
Beautiful with youth,
Life's elect,
Nature's truth,
Marching host on host,
Those bright, unblemished ones,
Manhood's boast,
Feed them to the guns.

Hearts and brains that teem
With blessing for the race,
Thought and dream,
Vision, grace,
Oh, love's best and most,
Bridegrooms, brothers, sons,
Host on host
Feed them to the guns.

Katharine Lee Bates

Katharine Lee Bates was an American writer, poet, and professor, best known for her poem 'America the Beautiful,' the lyrics of which have become one of the most iconic American patriotic songs. She was also influential in American literature as a professor at Wellesley College, where she mentored many female writers. A prolific poet and author, Bates wrote a variety of works including travel books, children's books, and literary criticism.

Katharine Lee Bates

Pigeon Post

Katharine Lee Bates, Simple Poetry

To My Country

Katharine Lee Bates, Simple Poetry

If You Could Come

Katharine Lee Bates, Simple Poetry

Yellow Clover

Katharine Lee Bates, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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Above The Battle

Honor and pity for the smitten field,
The valorous ranks mown down like precious corn,
Whose want must famish love morn after morn,
Till Death, the good physician, shall have healed
The craving and the tearspent eyelids sealed.
Proud be the homes that for each cannon-torn,
Encrimsoned rampart have been left forlorn;
Holy the knells o'er fallen patriots pealed.

But they, above the battle, throng a space
Of starry silences and silver rest.
Commingled ghosts, they press like brothers through
White, dove-winged portals, where one Father's face
Atones their passion, as the ethereal blue
Serenes the fiery glows of east and west.

Katharine Lee Bates

Gettysburg: A Battle Ode

I

Victors, living, with laureled brow,
And you that sleep beneath the sward!
Your song was poured from cannon throats:
It rang in deep-tongued bugle-notes:
Your triumph came; you won your crown,
The grandeur of a world's renown.
        But, in our later lays,
        Full freighted with your praise,
Fair memory harbors those whose lives, laid down
    In gallant faith and generous heat,
        Gained only sharp defeat.
All are at peace, who once so fiercely warred:
Brother and brother, now, we chant a common chord.


II

    For, if we say God wills,
    Shall we then idly deny Him
    Care of each host in the fight?
    His thunder was here in the hills
    When the guns were loud in July;
    And the flash of the mu...

George Parsons Lathrop

To My Country

O dear my Country, beautiful and dear,
Love cloth not darken sight.
God looketh through Love's eyes, whose vision clear
Beholds more flaws than keenest Hate hath known.
Nor is Love's judgment gentle, but austere;
The heart of Love must break ere it condone
One stain upon the white.

There comes an hour when on the parent turns
The challenge of the child;
The bridal passion for perfection burns;
Life gives her last allegiance to the best;
Each sweet idolatry the spirit spurns,
Once more enfranchised for its starry quest
Of beauty undefiled.

Love must be one with honor; yet to-day
Love liveth by a sign;
Allows no lasting compromise with clay,
But tends the mounting miracle of gold,
Content with service till the bud make way
To the rejoi...

Katharine Lee Bates

Yellow Clover

Must I, who walk alone,
Come on it still,
This Puck of plants
The wise would do away with,
The sunshine slants
To play with,
Our wee, gold-dusty flower, the yellow clover,
Which once in Parting for a time
That then seemed long,
Ere time for you was over,
We sealed our own?
Do you remember yet,
O Soul beyond the stars,
Beyond the uttermost dim bars
Of space,
Dear Soul, who found earth sweet,
Remember by love's grace,
In dreamy hushes of the heavenly song,
How suddenly we halted in our climb,
Lingering, reluctant, up that farthest hill,
Stooped for the blossoms closest to our feet,
And gave them as a token
Each to Each,
In lieu of speech,
In lieu of words too grievous to be spoken,
Those little, gypsy, wondering bloss...

Katharine Lee Bates

In The Artillery.

We are moving on in silence,
Save for rattling iron and steel,
And a skirmish echoing round us,
Showering faintly, peal on peal.

Like a lion roars the North wind
As a-horse we sternly clank,
While beside the guns our men drop,
Slyly shot from either flank.

You are musing, love, and smiling
By the hearth-fire of the Mill,
While the tangled oaks are cracking
Boughs upon the windy hill.

I can see the moonlight shining
Over fields of frozen calm;
I can hear the chapel organ,
And the singing of the psalm.

Fare you well, then, English village,
Which of all I loved the most,
Where my ghost alone can wander
Once again, when life is lost.

Fare you well, then, Sally Dorset;
You will never utter wail
For the sol...

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

From Far Dakota's Canons

From far Dakota's cañons,
Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lonesome stretch, the silence,
Haply to-day a mournful wail, haply a trumpet-note for heroes.

The battle-bulletin,
The Indian ambuscade, the craft, the fatal environment,
The cavalry companies fighting to the last in sternest heroism,
In the midst of their little circle, with their slaughter'd horses for breastworks,
The fall of Custer and all his officers and men.

Continues yet the old, old legend of our race,
The loftiest of life upheld by death,
The ancient banner perfectly maintain'd,
O lesson opportune, O how I welcome thee!
As sitting in dark days,
Lone, sulky, through the time's thick murk looking in vain for light, for hope,
From unsuspected parts a fierce and momentary proof,

Walt Whitman