I Pay My Debt For Lafayette And Rochambeau

- His Own Words

IN MEMORY OF KIFFIN ROCKWELL

    *        *        *        *        *

Eagle, whose fearless
Flight in vast spaces
Clove the inane,
While we stood tearless,
White with rapt faces
In wonder and pain. ...

Heights could not awe you,
Depths could not stay you.
Anguished we saw you,
Saw Death way-lay you
Where the storm flings
Black clouds to thicken
Round France's defender!
Archangel stricken
From ramparts of splendor -
Shattered your wings! ...

But Lafayette called you,
Rochambeau beckoned.
Duty enthralled you.
For France you had reckoned
Her gift and your debt.
Dull hearts could harden
Half-gods could palter.
For you never pardon
If Liberty's altar
You chanced to forget. ...

Stricken archangel!
Ramparts of splendor
Keep you, evangel
Of souls who surrender
No banner unfurled
For ties ever living,
Where Freedom has bound them.
Praise and thanksgiving
For love which has crowned them -
Love frees the world! ...

Edgar Lee Masters

Edgar Lee Masters was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist. Born in Kansas and raised in Illinois, Masters is best known for his collection of poems entitled "Spoon River Anthology" (1915), which is a series of epitaphs of residents of the fictional small town of Spoon River. His works reflect the everyday lives and frustrations of middle America. Masters also practiced law and wrote biographies for historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain.

Edgar Lee Masters

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Edgar Lee Masters, Simple Poetry

English

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Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France

(To have been read before the statue of Lafayette and Washington in Paris, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1916.)


I

Ay, it is fitting on this holiday,
Commemorative of our soldier dead,
When - with sweet flowers of our New England May
Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray -
Their graves in every town are garlanded,
That pious tribute should be given too
To our intrepid few
Obscurely fallen here beyond the seas.
Those to preserve their country's greatness died;
But by the death of these
Something that we can look upon with pride
Has been achieved, nor wholly unreplied
Can sneerers triumph in the charge they make
That from a war where Freedom was at stake
America withheld and, daunted, stood aside.


II

Be the...

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Champions of Liberty.

The pride of all our chivalry,
    The name of Worth will stand,
While throbs the pulse of liberty
    Within his native land:
The wreath his brow was formed to wear,
A nation's tears will freshen there.

The young companion of his fame,
    In war and peace allied,
With garlands woven round his name,
    Reposes at his side:
Duncan, whose deeds for evermore
Will live amid his cannon's roar.

Gates, in his country's quarrel bold,
    When she to arms appealed,
Sought like the Christian knights of old,
    His laurels on the field:
Where victory rent the welkin-dome,
He earned--a sepulchre at home.

The drum-beat of the bannered brave,
    The requiem and the knell,
The volley o'er the soldier's grave,
    His comrades' l...

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France

France fallen! France arisen! France of the brave!
France of lost hopes! France of Promethean zeal!
Napoleon's France, that bruised the despot's heel
Of Europe, while the feudal world did rave.
Thou France that didst burst through the rock-bound grave
Which Germany and England joined to seal,
And undismayed didst seek the human weal,
Through which thou couldst thyself and others save -
The wreath of amaranth and eternal praise!
When every hand was 'gainst thee, so was ours.
Freedom remembers, and I can forget: -
Great are we by the faith our past betrays,
And noble now the great Republic flowers
Incarnate with the soul of Lafayette.

Edgar Lee Masters

Stonewall Jackson's Grave.[A]

A simple, sodded mound of earth,
    Without a line above it;
With only daily votive flowers
    To prove that any love it:
The token flag that silently
    Each breeze's visit numbers,
Alone keeps martial ward above
    The hero's dreamless slumbers.

No name? - no record? Ask the world;
    The world has read his story -
If all its annals can unfold
    A prouder tale of glory: -
If ever merely human life
    Hath taught diviner moral, -
If ever round a worthier brow
    Was twined a purer laurel!

A twelvemonth only, since his sword
    Went flashing through the battle -
A twelvemonth only, since his ear
    Heard war's last deadly rattle -
And yet, have countless pilgrim-feet
    The pilgrim's guerdon paid him,
And w...

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Jacob Goodpasture

    When Fort Sumter fell and the war came
    I cried out in bitterness of soul:
    "O glorious republic now no more!"
    When they buried my soldier son
    To the call of trumpets and the sound of drums
    My heart broke beneath the weight
    Of eighty years, and I cried:
    "Oh, son who died in a cause unjust!
    In the strife of Freedom slain!"
    And I crept here under the grass.
    And now from the battlements of time, behold:
    Thrice thirty million souls being bound together
    In the love of larger truth,
    Rapt in the expectation of the birth
    Of a new Beauty,
    Sprung from Brotherhood and Wisdom.
    I with eyes of spirit see the Transfiguration
    Before you see it.
    But ye infinite brood of golden eagles nesting ev...

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Captain Orlando Killion

    Oh, you young radicals and dreamers,
    You dauntless fledglings
    Who pass by my headstone,
    Mock not its record of my captaincy in the army
    And my faith in God!
    They are not denials of each other.
    Go by reverently, and read with sober care
    How a great people, riding with defiant shouts
    The centaur of Revolution,
    Spurred and whipped to frenzy,
    Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea
    Over the precipice they were nearing,
    And fell from his back in precipitate awe
    To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being.
    Moved by the same sense of vast reality
    Of life and death, and burdened as they were
    With the fate of a race,
    How was I, a little blasphemer,
    Caught in the drift of a natio...

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