Glory

At the crowded gangway they kissed good-bye.
He had half a mind to scold her.
An officer's mother and not keep dry
The epaulet on his shoulder.

He had forgotten mother and fame,
His mind in a blood-mist floated,
But when reeling back from carnage they came,
One told him: "You are promoted!"

His friend smiled up from the wet red sand,
The look was afar, eternal,
But he tried to salute with his shattered hand:
"Room now for another colonel!"

Again he raged in that lurid hell
Where the country he loved had thrown him.
"You are promoted!" shrieked a shell.
His mother would not have known him.

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

Anniversary Hymn

Katharine Lee Bates, Simple Poetry

Above The Battle

Katharine Lee Bates, Simple Poetry

America The Beautiful

Katharine Lee Bates, Simple Poetry

The Pity Of It

Katharine Lee Bates, Simple Poetry

English

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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

America To England

1899

Who would trust England, let him lift his eyes
To Nelson, columned o'er Trafalgar Square,
Her hieroglyph of duty, written where
The roar of traffic hushes to the skies;
Or mark, while Paul's vast shadow softly lies
On Gordon's statued sleep, how praise and prayer
Flush through the frank young faces clustering there
To con that kindred rune of sacrifice.
O England, no bland cloud-ship in the blue,
But rough oak plunging on o'er perilous jars
Of reef and ice, our faith will follow you
The more for tempest roar that strains your spars
And splits your canvas, be your helm but true,
Your courses shapen by the eternal stars.



1900

The nightmare melts at last, and London wakes
To her old habit of victorious ease.
More men, ...

Katharine Lee Bates

The Dying Veteran

All-day-long the crash of cannon
Shook the battle-covered plain;
All-day-long the frenzied foemen
Dashed against our lines in vain;
All the field was piled with slaughter;
Now the lurid setting sun
Saw our foes in wild disorder,
And the bloody day was won.

Foremost on our line of battle
All-day-long a veteran stood
Stalwart, brawny, grim and steady,
Black with powder, smeared with blood;
Never flinched and never faltered
In the deadliest storm of lead,
And before his steady rifle
Lay a score of foemen dead.

Never flinched and never faltered
Till our shout of victory rose,
Till he saw defeat, disaster,
Overwhelmed our flying foes;
Then he trembled, then he tottered,
Gasped for breath and dropped his gun,
Staggered from ...

Hanford Lennox Gordon

The Alarm

(1803)
See "The Trumpet-Major"
IN MEMORY OF ONE OF THE WRITER'S FAMILY WHO WAS A VOLUNTEER DURING THE WAR WITH NAPOLEON



In a ferny byway
Near the great South-Wessex Highway,
A homestead raised its breakfast-smoke aloft;
The dew-damps still lay steamless, for the sun had made no sky-way,
And twilight cloaked the croft.

'Twas hard to realize on
This snug side the mute horizon
That beyond it hostile armaments might steer,
Save from seeing in the porchway a fair woman weep with eyes on
A harnessed Volunteer.

In haste he'd flown there
To his comely wife alone there,
While marching south hard by, to still her fears,
For she soon would be a mother, and few messengers were known there
In these campaigning years.

'Twas time...

Thomas Hardy

The Pity Of It

I. In South Africa

Over the lonesome African plain
The stars look down, like eyes of the slain.

A bumping ride across gullies and ruts,
Now a grumble and now a jest,
A bit of profanity jolted out,
Whist!
Into a hornet's nest!
Curse on the scout!
Long-bearded Boers rising out of the rocks,
Rocks that already are crimson-splashed,
Ping-ping of bullets, stabbings and cuts,
As if hell hurtled and hissed,
Then, muffling the shocks,
A sting in the breast,
A mist,
A woman's face down the darkness flashed,
Rest.

All as before, save for still forms spread
Under the boulders dripping red.

Over the lonesome African plain
The stars look down, like eyes of the slain.




II. In The Philippines
<...

Katharine Lee Bates

England To America

And what of thee, O Lincoln's Land? What gloom
Is darkening above the Sunset Sea?
Vowed Champion of Liberty, deplume
Thy war-crest, bow thy knee,
Before God answer thee.

What talk is thine of rebels? Didst thou turn,
My very child, thy vaunted sword on me,
To scoff to-day at patriot fires that burn
In hearts unbound to thee,
Flames of the Sunset Sea?

Katharine Lee Bates