Our Privilege

Not ours, where battle smoke upcurls,
And battle dews lie wet,
To meet the charge that treason hurls
By sword and bayonet.

Not ours to guide the fatal scythe
The fleshless Reaper wields;
The harvest moon looks calmly down
Upon our peaceful fields.

The long grass dimples on the hill,
The pines sing by the sea,
And Plenty, from her golden horn,
Is pouring far and free.

O brothers by the farther sea!
Think still our faith is warm;
The same bright flag above us waves
That swathed our baby form.

The same red blood that dyes your fields
Here throbs in patriot pride,
The blood that flowed when Lander fell,
And Bakers crimson tide.

And thus apart our hearts keep time
With every pulse ye feel,
And Mercys ringing gold shall chime
With Valors clashing steel.

Bret Harte

Bret Harte was an American author and poet, renowned for his works about pioneering life in California. Born on August 25, 1836, he gained national fame with his short stories and poetry depicting life in the early mining camps. His most famous works include 'The Luck of Roaring Camp' and 'The Outcasts of Poker Flat.' Harte's writings played a crucial role in shaping the Western genre in American literature. He passed away on May 5, 1902.

Bret Harte

The Old Major Explains

Bret Harte, Simple Poetry

Truthful James to the Editor

Bret Harte, Simple Poetry

The Old Camp-Fire

Bret Harte, Simple Poetry

What the Chimney Sang

Bret Harte, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Poem

We meet in peace, though from our native East
The sun that sparkles on our birthday feast
Glanced as he rose on fields whose dews were red
With darker tints than those Aurora spread.
Though shorn his rays, his welcome disk concealed
In the dim smoke that veiled each battlefield,
Still striving upward, in meridian pride,
He climbed the walls that East and West divide,
Saw his bright face flashed back from golden sand,
And sapphire seas that lave the Western land.

Strange was the contrast that such scenes disclose
From his high vantage oer eternal snows;
There Wars alarm the brazen trumpet rings
Here his love-song the mailed cicala sings;
There bayonets glitter through the forest glades
Here yellow cornfields stack their peaceful blades;
There the deep t...

Bret Harte

On William Francis Bartlett

O poor Romancer thou whose printed page,
Filled with rude speech and ruder forms of strife,
Was given to heroes in whose vulgar rage
No trace appears of gentler ways and life!

Thou who wast wont of commoner clay to build
Some rough Achilles or some Ajax tall;
Thou whose free brush too oft was wont to gild
Some single virtue till it dazzled all;

What right hast thou beside this laureled bier
Whereon all manhood lies whereon the wreath
Of Harvard rests, the civic crown, and here
The starry flag, and sword and jeweled sheath?

Seest thou these hatchments? Knowest thou this blood
Nourished the heroes of Colonial days
Sent to the dim and savage-haunted wood
Those sad-eyed Puritans with hymns of praise?

Look round thee! Everywhere is classic g...

Bret Harte

Lexington

Slowly the mist o'er the meadow was creeping,
Bright on the dewy buds glistened the sun,
When from his couch, while his children were sleeping,
Rose the bold rebel and shouldered his gun.
Waving her golden veil
Over the silent dale,
Blithe looked the morning on cottage and spire;
Hushed was his parting sigh,
While from his noble eye
Flashed the last sparkle of liberty's fire.

On the smooth green where the fresh leaf is springing
Calmly the first-born of glory have met;
Hark! the death-volley around them is ringing!
Look! with their life-blood the young grass is wet
Faint is the feeble breath,
Murmuring low in death,
"Tell to our sons how their fathers have died;"
Nerveless the iron hand,
Raised for its native land,
Lies by the weapon that ...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

See The Field Of Battle Gleams.

See, the field of battle gleams
Yonward past the tented streams,
There the foe is camping;
By the thirst-assuaging rill,
From the copse behind the hill
Hear his war-steeds champing.

Northern Knights and Southern Sons,
Onward to the gleaming guns!
Now's the hour of battle!
Though his files be ten to one,
Seek the foe from sun to sun,
Where his muskets rattle.

O'er the walls with slaughter wet,
O'er the ball-scarred parapet,
Daring man and missile,
Charge to meet his best or worst,
Where his shrieking bombshells burst
And his bullets whistle.

Roll in waves of living blue,
Pierce the columned centre through,
Fill the world with wonder;
Rush, as with a lion's will,
Where his lightnings flash to kill
And his cann...

A. H. Laidlaw

Heroes.

    In rich Virginian woods,
The scarlet creeper reddens over graves,
Among the solemn trees enlooped with vines;
Heroic spirits haunt the solitudes, -
The noble souls of half a million braves,
    Amid the murmurous pines.


    Ah! who is left behind,
Earnest and eloquent, sincere and strong,
To consecrate their memories with words
Not all unmeet? with fitting dirge and song
To chant a requiem purer than the wind,
    And sweeter than the birds?


    Here, though all seems at peace,
The placid, measureless sky serenely fair,
The laughter of the breeze among the leaves,
The bars of sunlight slanting through the trees,
The reckless wild-flowers blooming everywhere,
    The grasses' delicate sheaves, -


    Nathless eac...

Emma Lazarus

Battle Days

I

Veteran memories rally to muster
Here at the call of the old battle days:
Cavalry clatter and cannon's hoarse bluster:
All the wild whirl of the fight's broken maze:
Clangor of bugle and flashing of sabre,
Smoke-stifled flags and the howl of the shell,
With earth for a rest place and death for a neighbor,
And dreams of a charge and the deep rebel yell.
Stern was our task in the field where the reaping
Spared the ripe harvest, but laid our men low:
Grim was the sorrow that held us from weeping:
Awful the rush of the strife's ebb and flow.
Swift came the silence - our enemy hiding
Sudden retreat in the cloud-muffled night:
Swift as a hawk-pounce our hill-and-dale riding;
Hundreds on hundreds we caught in their flight!
Hard and incessant the danger a...

George Parsons Lathrop