Old Trees

Old trees, old trees! in your mystic gloom
There's many a warrior laid,
And many a nameless and lonely tomb
Is sheltered beneath your shade.
Old trees, old trees! without pomp or prayer
We buried the brave and the true,
We fired a volley and left them there
To rest, old trees, with you.

Old trees, old trees! keep watch and ward
Over each grass-grown bed;
'Tis a glory, old trees, to stand as guard
Over the Southern dead;
Old trees, old trees! we shall pass away
Like the leaves you yearly shed,
But ye, lone sentinels, still must stay,
Old trees, to guard "our dead".

Abram Joseph Ryan

Abram Joseph Ryan was an American poet, Catholic priest, and former Confederate chaplain. Known as the 'Poet-Priest of the South,' his most famous work is 'The Conquered Banner.' Ryan wrote many poems that reflected his Southern heritage and the American Civil War. His works often possess a spiritual and melancholic tone, inspired by the losses of the war and his religious faith. In addition to poetry, he also wrote essays and gave public speeches.

Abram Joseph Ryan

A Reverie ["Those hearts of ours -- how strange! how strange!"]

Abram Joseph Ryan, Simple Poetry

Inevitable

Abram Joseph Ryan, Simple Poetry

Sunless Days

Abram Joseph Ryan, Simple Poetry

The Poet Priest

Abram Joseph Ryan, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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In Memoriam (David J. Ryan, C.S.A.)

Thou art sleeping, brother, sleeping
    In thy lonely battle grave;
Shadows o'er the past are creeping,
Death, the reaper, still is reaping,
Years have swept, and years are sweeping
Many a memory from my keeping,
But I'm waiting still, and weeping
    For my beautiful and brave.

When the battle songs were chanted,
    And war's stirring tocsin pealed,
By those songs thy heart was haunted,
And thy spirit, proud, undaunted,
Clamored wildly -- wildly panted:
"Mother! let my wish be granted;
I will ne'er be mocked and taunted
That I fear to meet our vaunted
    Foemen on the bloody field.

"They are thronging, mother! thronging,
    To a thousand fields of fame;
Let me go -- 'tis wrong, and wronging
God and thee to crush this longin...

Abram Joseph Ryan

The Old Ash Tree.

Thou beautiful Ash! thou art lowly laid,
    And my eyes shall hail no more
From afar thy cool and refreshing shade,
    When the toilsome journey's o'er.
The winged and the wandering tribes of air
    A home 'mid thy foliage found,
But thy graceful boughs, all broken and bare,
    The wild winds are scattering round.

The storm-demon sent up his loudest shout
    When he levelled his bolt at thee,
When thy massy trunk and thy branches stout
    Were riven by the blast, old tree!
It has bowed to the dust thy stately form,
    Which for many an age defied
The rush and the roar of the midnight storm,
    When it swept through thy branches wide.

I have gazed on thee with a fond delight
    In childhood's happier day,
And watched the moonbeams...

Susanna Moodie

March of the Deathless Dead

Gather the sacred dust
    Of the warriors tried and true,
Who bore the flag of a Nation's trust
And fell in a cause, though lost, still just,
    And died for me and you.

Gather them one and all,
    From the private to the chief;
Come they from hovel or princely hall,
They fell for us, and for them should fall
    The tears of a Nation's grief.

Gather the corpses strewn
    O'er many a battle plain;
From many a grave that lies so lone,
Without a name and without a stone,
    Gather the Southern slain.

We care not whence they came,
    Dear in their lifeless clay!
Whether unknown, or known to fame,
Their cause and country still the same;
    They died -- and wore the Gray.

Wherever the brave have died,
    They...

Abram Joseph Ryan

The Old Oak Tree

I sit beneath your leaves, old oak,
You mighty one of all the trees;
Within whose hollow trunk a man
Could stable his big horse with ease.

I see your knuckles hard and strong,
But have no fear they'll come to blows;
Your life is long, and mine is short,
But which has known the greater woes?

Thou has not seen starved women here,
Or man gone mad because ill-fed,
Who stares at stones in city streets,
Mistaking them for hunks of bread.

Thou hast not felt the shivering backs
Of homeless children lying down
And sleeping in the cold, night air,
Like doors and walls in London town.

Knowing thou hast not known such shame,
And only storms have come thy way,
Methinks I could in comfort spend
My summer with thee, day by day.

William Henry Davies

To An Old Oak.

        Immota manet; multosque nepotes,
    Multa virûm volvens durando sæcula, vincit.    VIRG.

Round thee, alas, no shadows move!
From thee no sacred murmurs breathe!
Yet within thee, thyself a grove,
Once did the eagle scream above,
    And the wolf howl beneath.

There once the steel-clad knight reclin'd,
His sable plumage tempest-toss'd;
And, as the death-bell smote the wind,
From towers long fled by human kind,
    His brow the hero cross'd!

Then Culture came, and days serene,
And village-sports, and garlands gay.
Full many a pathway cross'd the green;
And maids and shepherd-youths were seen,
    To celebrate the May.

Father of many a forest deep,
(Whence many a navy thunder-fraught)
Erst in their acorn-cells asleep...

Samuel Rogers

Yew-Trees

There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale,
Which to this day stands single, in the midst
Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore:
Not loathe to furnish weapons for the Bands
Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched
To Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the sea
And drew their sounding bows at Azincour,
Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers.
Of vast circumference and gloom profound
This solitary Tree! a living thing
Produced too slowly ever to decay;
Of form and aspect too magnificent
To be destroyed. But worthier still of note
Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Up-coiling, and inveteratley convolved,
Nor uninformed wi...

William Wordsworth